1940, Standal, Germany–

Immigrated to the UK in 1957

The self-taught artist Furnival left East Germany at a young age with her grandmother and eventually settled in England in the 1950s. She later became connected to the concrete poets through her husband, John Furnival. The title of this work is a pun on chivalry and shrivelling, bringing together fabric, skin, ageing, and change. The front carries a quote by the French composer and pianist Erik Satie, roughly translated as ‘I was born very young into a very old world’, conveying a sense of displacement: that of a modern, progressive spirit born into a society lagging behind. On the back, Marshall McLuhan’s famous phrase ‘the medium is the message’ breaks into fragments such as ‘mess’ and ‘at my age’, linking front and back in a playful meditation on ageing and material transformation.

Bernard Moxham Collection