CHRISTINE KEELER
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Dear Christine - A tribute to Christine Keeler

Arts Council England supported a tribute to Christine Keeler, which opened at Vane Newcastle upon Tyne in June 2019 before touring to the Elysium Gallery in Swansea in October 2019 and ending at Arthouse1 in London in February 2020. Artist and curator Fionn Wilson's four-year project to reclaim and re-frame Keeler and featured artwork from 20 female artists working in poetry, music and performance art.

Music

'Dear Christine' is a composition for solo cello paying tribute to Christine Keeler, commissioned by curator Fionn Wilson and composed by Katie Chatburn
"My composition ‘Dear Christine’, draws upon all the paintings in this exhibition and is an emotional response to the narrative of Christine Keeler’s life. The refrain reflects being ‘caught in a loop’, as it struck me that variations on Christine’s story still play out across society - in politics, in the media and our workplaces.

But at the heart of it is a sense of incantation or a prayer for Christine, melancholy, fragile, but infused with hope and dignity in the face of such overwhelming pressure."
Katie Chatburn, May 2019

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Fionn Wilson - “Christine mesmerises”, 2017
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Fionn Wilson - “Christine at the Flamingo Club”, 2017
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Fionn Wilson - “Christine Keeler with her cat”, 2017 (Priseman Seabrook Collection) (the cat's name was Ziggy).
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Fionn Wilson - “Christine and the poisoned apple”, 2017
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Lucy Cox - “The Chair”, 2018
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Julia Maddison - “Remains”, 2017
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Natalie d’Arbeloff - “The Game”, 2018
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Natalie d’Arbeloff - “Scarlet Woman”, 2018
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Caroline Coon - “Christine Keeler: Anger, Blame, Ruin, Grief”, 2019

A short film commissioned by Fionn Wilson for the exhibition 'Dear Christine - a Tribute to Christine Keeler'. Written and performed by Caroline Coon, directed by Charlotte Metcalf and edited by Frederic Irigaray.
Catherine Edmunds - "Christine Speaks", 2016
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Claudia Clare - “Christine Keeler: An Uncertain Pilgrimage”, 2019
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Sadie Hennessy - “Synecdoche (Christine Keeler Cake) - everybody wanted a piece of me”, 2018
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Sadie Hennessy - “Peach Lustre”, 2018
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Wendy Nelson - “Member of the Establishment", 2017
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Roxana Halls - “Laughing while Smashing (for Mandy and Christine)", 2018
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Sonja Benskin Mesher - “small life/#christine”, 2016
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Sonja Benskin Mesher - “labelled/#christine 2”, 2016
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Sonja Benskin Mesher - “the evidence, christine”, 2016
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Marguerite Horner - “Paparazzi”, 2017
Marguerite Horner - “Casting the first stone”, 2017
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Barbara Howey - “Murray’s Cabaret Club 1”, 2017
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Barbara Howey - “Murray’s Cabaret Club 2”, 2017
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Shani Rhys James - “Pandora’s IPad”, 2018
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Shani Rhys James - “Christine”, 2018
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Sadie Lee - “Scandalous”, 2019
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Jowonder - “The Underworld of Zos”, 2019
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"Christine in gold" - embroidery on dupion silk commissioned by Fionn Wilson, stitched by Fine Cell Work, 2016
By Fine Cell Work,
a social enterprise that teaches needlework to prisoners.
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Cathy Lomax - “Welcome to the Sixties”, 2017
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Cathy Lomax - “The Keeler Affair”, 2018
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Stella Vine - “Christine, burn baby, burn”, 2012
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Sarah Shaw - “portrait of a lady”, 2016
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Sal Jones - “I took on the sins of a generation”, 2016
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Sal Jones - “Wards heart weakens”, 2016
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Sal Jones - “God save Christines”, 2016

Poetry from "Dear Christine"

Railway

(i.m. Christine Keeler)

An abandoned bus on a farm,
a derelict boat beached beside the river,
a summer house that swivels on its rusted base
to face the sun,
an old railway carriage.

Living there, free, secret
This is a child’s game.

The train travels along the coast
the sea gleaming and shivering,
the herons watching in the sand,
people digging for lugworms.

The girl living in the carriage is going somewhere.
She dreams of possibilities, of maybe and perhaps.
A child’s play, full of bravery and risk.

But in a boat that is beached, a broken bus,
a railway carriage marooned away from the sidelines
it is hard to get away.

Through the cracks in the deck to the holes in the walls,
through the cracked glass of the train windows
the old intruders – Cold, and Frightened, and Lonely –
sneak in, desperate for love.

The girl living in the carriage is going on a journey.
She doesn’t know where it will end.

Jeni Williams
Historiography


If Christine Keeler was discovered in Pompeii
Would they say that because her ghost-shape
Was found outside the Lupanar
She was a prostitute?


This, they say, is a woman of the brothel
Because of how she fell –
Sumptuous, unfolded, extravagant.
Yet the same fallen pose
Could be read otherwise.
She might have been a visitor to the house
Of pleasure, merely there
To deliver fishes, olives, peaches, bread


The wide basket of her thighs
Open to speculation only.

Jo Mazelis

Christine’s chair

Draping this chair since 1963
I’ve bled over the veneer,
aging, critically prettily,
contemplated pills to end it –
less chaos. Less mess.

This room is stuffed
with people, simmering agendas,
quests for cash. or secrets or women
wanting tips on the art
of posing for so long,
without going numb.

They go. I’m left,
stamped – an un-sent letter,
yellowing, bit-by-bit
as the world decides
whether to release me.

Bring in the fruit I crave,
brimming from the corporate pot,
lead me to warmer rooms,
give me an iron shot.

Take me back
to that child’s heart –
where fear was reducible
and didn’t move me
to the deep black eye of the periphery,

I’ve delivered and lost life
in this triangle pose,
from God’s
grace –
a dead-bad fuck.

Tiny immaculate womb,
pushed up against wood;
beautifully rationed hips –
spilling, from the waist of it.


In that unclaimed corner,
I’ll dig out a temple,
bury a set of scriptures, my foetuses,
call the truth of my life;
grow stronger legs
from squatting to tend the gully,
to be a wife, wolf-bitten lips
and old pearls

Come! Don your boss face,
puff up your chest,
decorate my wrists in flower cuffs.
Twist my forearms to your needs,
unpeel
my skin
from the sweat-stick
of this long sit.

I need to see the faces of women
below,
outside this ‘Establishment Club’,
laughing in the smoke rings,
imagining the babies declining,
easy flings.

I’ll remind them –
sex is not lethal
every time.
Open your medicated legs,
but think of our England,
my girl-youth,
that cool, numbing abuse,
all the precisely wed, the quick whores –
identical screaming,
turning. their backs
diligently,
in service
to that dog-tired man. look.

This chair, with its long bones
and hidden arches
is my legacy.
I’m nailed in, flesh and limbs
printed for the programme,
naked
or not.



I’ll speak
through the angle of my neck now,
a pause,
a brow twitch to the east,
hold my lips for the next man, for peace
inside these cold walls,
this occupation.

They visit still when it suits
business,
to feed off my look,
for a spank, a smooth,
a stolen hour,
for rejuvenation

Mute in my box – dancer, bird,
I wait for light, for air
to stir
through the slowly clouding panes,
to bring me feathers to weave a head-dress,
a rainbow robe
from the monochrome.

Empress-goddess. Girl-birther.
Sentry-woman. Cabaret-lass –
clasped as his metal
still rolls out weapons,
digital death,
acid attacks.

I’ll stay, keep staying –
stay here for his return,
smile, loosely for the camera,
straddling under this bulb,
his contract.

Guinevere Clark

Found poem 1980

(every word spoken by the interviewer except those
marked with * told by Christine Keeler, the interviewee)


Keep her end up
£400 a month
what can you bring to men only readers
how can you help them?

Do you regard yourself as particularly sexually experienced?

The name Christine Keeler
A bygone world
Led to death of one
Disgrace of another
Departure of anothert
Nearly brought the government down
Security threat led him to admit the truth
Were you in a position to spy
Face turned a hundred heads in political farcical sexual comedy of manners

What have you learned from the failure of your two marriages both of which didn’t last long Do you feel that the break up was your fault?
None of them either lasted very long? Both ended very quickly

Do you expect to meet the right one?
How do the children live with your past?

This is the first television interview I have ever given
Newspapers would never speak to me
If you wanted to forget the Christine Keeler and what happened in 1963
You wouldn’t be selling that name now would you?

*Well as I said.....

Publish and be damned is that what your motto would be?

*Yes yes yes

Patrick Jones
The pieces


Magnum of champagne—knitting needle—Soho rain—
Murray’s Club—a railway carriage—the bromide print—
the baby, the baby, and all that blood--

you, crying out—you, crying out with joy, driving in a car—
with Stephen—the bend of a country lane--
your hair breezing--

the revolution will shortly begin--
your lovely legs will straddle what is not an Arne Jacobsen—
Series 7—your face remain inscrutable--

as you regard--
your face in that photograph—
the architecture of paradox--

Lucky had an axe--
Johnny fired a gun five times at the lock—
now you rise in the dock--

all the stories you’ve told—as you draw the curtains—
the ghostwriter sets down--
his tape recorder--

when you pose for Stephen--
his elegant hand across the paper--
what a tender, brutal self-deceit is captured--

remember when—the axe—the gun—or the Series 7— you
straddled—not an Arne Jacobsen—not knowing fully,
then, what’s in a name—Eugene or Jack--

you, crying out—crying out in pleasure--
crying out in pain—you, rising--
from the pool—that rent-red, summer-evening sky--

at the job interview--
remember your name—what’s in a name—
assemble the pieces you own—hesitate--

take his hand--
‘Christine Sloane,’ you--
say—smooth down your skirt—and sit--

Kathryn Gray

A hand to play

(for Christine Keeler)

The hand built her
a bike before
she could ride it.
She took it
to peddle it
to the corners
of his grainy world.

The hand opened her
up to boys. She breathed
fires, conquered trees,
rough ‘n’ tumbled
with tombstoning
Tom, Dick & Harry.

The hand stuffed her
with fibreglass
then stitched her with
thread so, she daren’t
tread beyond hunger
from his bed.
Until,
teen-bled, no script,
unwed, she ended up
with a baby
gin-dead.





​With the hand’s final word, 
she rode across borders, 
without tracks,
to the window of eyes,
to be
a fashion sketch, 
of Mary Quant size.

The hand of rule
caged her, paraded
and staged her for
the Scalps,
and Suits
slapped her
gem-wax buttocks,
smoothed her
polished thighs:
a mannequin,
a plaything for
snollygosters in
loose neckties.

The fateful dip
in a skinny pool,
nude, beneath
a lecherous moon.

​




She was handed
to the stiff with an
upper-crust lip.

Was it kismet?
Was it just a blip?

After her

postcoital
cigarette,
slithers of
glass pushed
from within;
grew from her
cheek,
from her lids,
from her tits,
to score
the crease of his
pillowed peck.

Cold blood cast
a shadow of war
between them.


​




​She invented sex
in the sixties where
the odd squeeze,
translated to sleaze.

News-hacks picked
at the lauded titles’
bricked wounds;
where landed ranks
of peevish prudes
were toppled by
a tiny
teenage
termagant
from the wrong side
of the divide.

Gemma June Howe
Flash

(Christine Keeler astride an ‘Arne Jacobsen’ chair, 1963)
​

A sunless studio in Soho. Smoke curling the stairwell. Trumpet creeping
like vines from the ground floor. Flash. I did as I was told. Stood stripped
and bare as a new-born foal. Straddled the chair. Leant into its unyielding
grain. Fizzed at its rigid geometry. The way it cinched at the waist, shielding
the softest parts of me. The powdery folds of my belly. Glared at the camera lens
like a lover. Unabashed. In just twenty nine frames he captured every fragment–
my upper lip bowed like a harp. The small crease between my eyebrows
like the pleat of a bed sheet. Defiant wrinkle pressed to my nose. Later,
they listed all the men I’d taken to bed. Asked, are there any who you have actually loved?
Are there any who loved you?


Mari Ellis Dunning
Like me

—for Christine Keeler (1942-2017)

Like me, you were a tomboy, climbing trees,
riding your rusty bike by the river, knees
muddy, playing with boys. One mum or dad
captured in black and white a look you had—
aside from plaits and overbite—the ease

of a child at home in herself, smiling to please
no one. But your stepdad stifled days like these,
with his look, his hands, his friends. And you were glad,
like me,

to flee to London, where I thought books were keys
to freedom but, like you at times, would seize
the chance to make some foolish man mad
for me. Adventuresome, we were, not bad,
half wanting love, harbouring half-felt pleas:
like me.

Charlotte Innes

​Christine Keeler vs. The Crown

Put the record on, but make it backwards: The Prime Minister’s Crisis walks out of the Crown Court and down the steps, chin up, face on;

a regular Marie Antoinette, that bloody whore, that slinky party girl--

Let’s reverse it. It’s 1963, and Stephen sits in his apartment coughing barbiturates back up, the judge is
sitting and swallowing the guilty verdict down. It’s 1963, and when it’s over, Christine gets up, buttons up, and retreats out of Gordon’s apartment, unsuspecting. Keep going. The chair’s there, but then she’s gone: blink and you’ll miss her, in the spaces between the camera flash.

Now it’s 1961, so she climbs back down into Lord Astor’s swimming pool, chlorine-eyed. The water’s closing over her head. There she goes. Further:

It’s 1961, and the name Yevgeny is new in Christine’s mouth. Call her a call girl, and what could she know anyway? Further. Her first eight per week warm in her hand, the bite of the showgirl tiara against her scalp, rubbing her feet in a back room somewhere. More champagne, anyone?

Further. Her baby breathes again for six more days. Bring the puppies back up from the bathtub. Let’s leave the pen alone for writing. Let’s take the word perjury out of people’s mouths. It’s like they say. It’s like they always say, to showgirls, to babysitters, ten a penny girls drawn into London from elsewhere, who knows, who cares—what’s a girl got to be running from?

What’s nine months, to a woman? After all, nothing has been proved.

Sarah Caulfield

Gospel

Lost in a shrinking flat, radiators hissing,
radio on low, you dab at your palms

to stem the bleeding. Tangy red,
spoiled apples, spilling their pips

like scandal. A movie unspools
from the VCR. Showgirl clenches a fist.

Taken on the floor, in a hundred stabs,
you’re someone else’s. Camera-kiss.

Clapper-board. The stiffening
journalist’s pen. A clothes horse

straddles the kitchen, fugs
the window with its nylon heat,

a lover’s tie, his tongue pressed
against the arch of your mouth.





​Showgirl, he calls you, sign tacked 

to your back like a cross --

howling across gossiping headlines, 
tantalising dog whistles, and yes,

many will call you Showgirl, muddy 
your Keeler, whittle you down

to a whisper, but as you snap back, 
the skin at your jaw is tight.

Christine, you tell them, slapping away 
at the hand that catches your elbow,

nuzzling its fingers into your hair, 
Christine, spitting paper, bone, gospel.


Natalie Ann Holborow

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