The document also brings into question several of Ivesmail’s ‘discoveries’. Ivesmail lays much of his curatorial credibility on his uncovering of the subliminal references of some of Naomi’s motifs. Central to this is his detection of “the geographical conflation of meadow, water and final resting place; the union of technique applied to, respectively, the tree bark found in the meadow and around Ehrlich’s Pond (SSB.2-28/34), the interior walls of the Jelish residence (SSB.3-13/40) and, finally, to the dyad of graves, enclosing father and son (ED.70-71). The cycle pulls full circle revealing a dense web of reference and echo”. This “dense web” is essentially employed by Ivesmail as the justification for his role as the most appropriate ‘keeper’ of the Jelish archive; a curator who endured a near decade-long battle to bring Naomi’s work to a greater public. Of course this discovery is made a great deal more accessible to any onlooker upon inspection of the ‘Grandmother Sketchbook’ - the artist rather than curator delineating the associations for our collective eye.
Could it be suggested that by his determined suppression of this and other materials found in this new collection Ivesmail sought to take credit for something that he had neither discovered nor connected? Throughout the recovered works, Ivesmail’s research, findings and conclusions are queried; the various holes in the central collection are filled; Naomi’s oeuvre is cast in a different hue. Fundamentally, the onlooker is made aware of the lack of a definitive, an objective truth, and a stable finality regarding the life of Naomi Jelish.
This lack of end, of closure, is paralleled by the ‘final’ image of this and indeed any other Naomi V. Jelish collection [21]. The careful outline of a window, cast by the artist against a much earlier letter home from Ms Demaio praising her efforts, resists easy interpretation. Are we looking in or is Naomi looking out? This drawing, the latest definitively dated by the artist, lingers delicately around the rest of the youngster’s work. Out of time, out of sequence and certainly out of place, the depiction perhaps underlines what any onlooker should bring to Naomi’s work, be it this or the central collection - an open mind.
Jamie Shovlin