| ‘This is a big task, mad for the late hour but it seems natural’ … Marion Coutts. Photograph: Gary Calton for the Observer |
My hero:
Marion Coutts by Jenny Turner
A friend writes about the artist whose remarkable book about her husband dying of a brain tumour, The Iceberg, has won the Wellcome prize
Saturday 2 May 2015
T
he other day, I was looking for something on the internet when I found a picture of Marion Coutts from 1989, wearing her famous Poll Tax dress: A-line and sacklike, NO POLL TAX in huge felt letters stitched all down the front. If you’ve read her remarkable book, The Iceberg, which won the Wellcome prize this week, you’ll know how good Marion is on bodies, dresses, artworks, foodstuffs, “material, solid objects … the consolation of the real”. If you remember what happens at the end of it, you’ll see why this picture was a shock.