|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| UPDATED
EVERY THURSDAY
Last Update: Friday
19th November 2004
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| All
content © New Journal Enterprises, 2004. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Deborah Weil
Remembering: From left, sister Miriam, partner Robert Atiko, mother
Sylvia and ex-husband Dick Coldwell
|
|
Mariachi band farewell to much-loved gallery owner
|
OPENING with Lulu’s upbeat hit Shout and closing to the strains
of a mariachi band, the funeral of gallery owner Deborah Weil was
as unconventional as the woman herself.
Friends and family, artists and human rights campaigners afterwards
went on to view what will be the final show at the Mexico Gallery
in Fleet Road, Hampstead, before it closes at the end of the year
– an exhibition of Ms Weil’s collages and photomontages.
She died at home in Southampton Road, Kentish Town, on November 6
after being diagnosed with cancer in 2002. Family flew in from Mexico
City – Ms Weil’s birthplace – for the service at Golders
Green Crematorium, where a tribute by her mother Sylvia was read.
It remembered her as a nonconformist with a fiercely guarded library
of French books who daubed words from Baudelaire on her bedroom wall
as a teenager. She concluded: “It is a privilege to be Deborah’s
mother.”
There was more mariachi at the wake in the gallery, which was attended
by artists Ms Weil had befriended over the gallery’s two years
and campaigners who worked alongside her trying to secure the release
of Israeli nuclear arms whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu. Bruce Kent,
vice-president of CND, came to meet her family.
Donatella Rovera, from Amnesty International, described her 13 years
of work on the Vanunu campaign as invaluable.
She said: “Deborah was brilliant at creative ideas to grab attention,
putting together the newsletter every year. She thought of putting
the cage outside the Israeli embassy and getting people like Bruce
Kent and Julie Christie inside it to protest at what was going on.”
Her ex-husband, Dick Coldwell, remembered her creativity. He said:
“She would study into the night and then produce extraordinary
designs or yarn paintings. We lived at that time very largely in one
room and I would often wake up to face a very challenging if beautiful
object over my cornflakes.”
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
