Tacita Dean on witnessing Ceal Floyer’s final work of art: ‘She gave death the middle finger’

The Royal Academician celebrates an extraordinary moment as her friend, the artist Ceal Floyer, approached the end of her life last month• Read more: Ceal Floyer obituaryIt is very hard to describe a work by the British conceptual artist Ceal Floyer because description overburdens it. Her practice was so finely wrought that it existed only in the experience between a work’s idea and its absorption. Ceal handled this equation deftly and with perfect poise, but it was a perilous and naked process with little or no place to hide, or none.Resolving the relationship between an idea’s inception and its manifestation became increasingly fraught for her and many works never made it to fruition. Therein lay her courage. This is why I wanted to add something to last month’s obituary of her by Jonathan Watkins. Continue reading...