Jennifer Higgie – Favourite Things
Each week Reaction Weekend brings you Favourite Things – interviews with interesting people about the skills, hobbies, pleasures and pastimes that make them who they are.
Jennifer Higgie is an Australian writer, art critic and editor-at-large of the contemporary arts magazine Frieze. She is the author of the children’s book There’s Not One, the novel Bedlam and, most recently, The Mirror and The Palette, a history of female self-portraiture. She also hosts Bow Down, a podcast about women in art history.
These are a few of her favourite things…
The first swim of summer
It is that feeling when you are tired and worn out and can’t remember your skin or what nature feels like, then you plunge into the mighty ocean, ideally in Greece or Australia. That is one of the greatest feelings of all time. Everything is washed away and you’re reunited with your skin and completely in the present. It is a magnificent feeling. I go to the ladies pond in Hampstead Heath, it is not quite the same as the pacific though. I love the sea and living in London, but I miss the sea.
Music
I grew up in a very musical household, there was no minute of the day when my mother wasn’t playing music very loudly in our house. She would play a lot of Ella Fitzgerald and loved to dance around the house to Neil Diamond. And she would take us to orchestral works from a tender age. My sister, Susie Higgie, is a really brilliant musician, I love her music. I really love BBC Radio 3 too, it is my great solace in life and I put it on the moment I wake up. I love that it introduces me to new music that I might not have known about. My music taste is very eclectic: a lot of classical, jazz, contemporary and world music. At the moment I am really loving Ólafur Arnald and Alice Ott’s The Chopin Project, it is my essential bath time listening.
Regional museums and galleries
In many small, out-of-the-way towns they have tiny little local museums or galleries. They might have five paintings and they are likely all from some obscure painter from the 18th or 19th century that you have never heard of. But, for some reason, the museum has acquired them. I always love those stories that come from these small museums and galleries; why is this painting in this collection? Who bought it? And who is the artist? You can discover amazing artists. I love trying to find women painters from the past who have never, or rarely, been shown before.
Filing copy
I am writing full time now and doing a lot of freelance writing, as well as writing books. Whenever I get a brief there is suddenly this pressure of the immense amount of research I have to do. There is always a point in the writing when I think, “I can’t do this, I have nothing original to say”. I worry that I haven’t read enough, so I read more and wrestle with it for a while. Then it is too long, then too short and then I have imposter syndrome. All the agony of writing. Then I press send, and am overcome with that feeling of relief. After I file, I watch real comfort television.
A long dinner on a warm night
I can’t think of anything better than the anticipation for a long dinner on a warm night, beneath the stars with the people I love. Preferably by the sea and with a lot of cold white wine. I think that feeling when you’re with friends on a summer evening is the best feeling in the world. And it has to be outside; there has to be stars and the sound of the sea. It is even better if you have nothing to do the next day, so you don’t have to worry about a hangover.