Fawcett MK: Keeping Up

Three artists Louise Bourgeois was 88 years old when she created Maman , a giant sculpture of a spider. The work was 30 feet high and 33 feet across and it was first exhibited in the Turbine Hall at the Tate Modern in the year 2000. Louise Bourgeois died in 2010 at the age of 98. 'The Spider is an ode to my mother. She was my best friend. Like a spider, my mother was a weaver. My family was in the business of tapestry restoration, and my mother was in charge of the workshop. Like spiders, my mother was very clever.'  Edna O’Brien was born in 1930 and died in 2024. When she was in her 80s, she travelled to Nigeria twice, to speak to some of the girls who had been victims of the Boko Haram abductions. The visits provided the basis for her last novel, Girl, published in 2019, which is a harrowing account of the kidnappings and rapes, and starts with the chilling sentence:  ‘I was a girl once, but not any more’ .  Edna O’Brien spoke later about how the focus of all her writin...