Jarman’s Broken English

How is it that Leg of Lamb has only just discovered Derek Jarman’s ode to Marianne Faithful’s 1979 album Broken English?!  Made in the same year as the album’s release, the short, 12 minute film features 3 songs from the record:   ‘Witches’ Song’, ‘The Ballad of Lucy Jordan’ and ‘Broken English’ accompanied by a mix of found footage superimposed with strange, ritualistic scenarios and clips of the singer – imagery made all the more haunting given Faithfull’s contemporaneous descent into addiction.

More Marianne

Marianne Faithfull, Curator

Marianne Faithfull photographed by Robert Mapplethorpe in 1976

Marianne Faithfull is curating an exhibition at Tate Liverpool that she hopes will be like “seeing…something like the inside of my head”.  Entitled Innocence and Experience, the group exhibition features works from the Tate’s archive selected by Faithfull with the assistance of her first husband, curator John Dunbar.  While some of the works included are directly self referential (like the Mapplethorpe above), the exhibition is largely shaped by Faithfull’s love for William Blake, whose anthology of poems ‘Songs of Innocence and Experience’ gives the exhibition its name.  Several works by Blake are included in the show, as well as pieces by Man Ray, Francis Bacon and Piero Manzoni.

Innocence and Experience opens at Tate Liverpool on April 21.

Dennis Morris & Marianne Faithfull – the unseen images

Dennis Morris : Marianne Faithfull, installation shot, Snap Galleries, London

The album cover of Marianne Faithfull’s Broken English is iconic – addiction never looked so good.  Earlier this month Dennis Morris, the photographer responsible for the image, released unseen photographs from the Broken English shoot for exhibition at Snap Galleries in London.  Unfortunately the photographs are lukewarm.  They are certainly interesting historically, but there were reasons why these didn’t make it to the cover after all…

Dennis Morris : Marianne Faithfull, Unseen images from the Broken English session, Snap Galleries,  8 Piccadilly Arcade, London until 31st July 2010