Courtney Love x Parliament Tattoo Charity Auction

Emma Ruth Rundle, born in 1983 in Los Angeles, California USA, is a multi instrumental musician and visual artist. She is most recognized for her textural electric guitar work and genre blending catalog but has a substantial history of making visual work that combines photography, poetry, oil painting, and drawing that is equally hard to classify. She was the first female curator of Roadburn festival 2020. She currently lives and makes work in Portland, Oregon.

I was bounced around from one place to another as a troubled youth. By age 14, I ended up in a boot camp type place for problematic kids run by a cult in rural New Mexico. I documented some of my time and the other kids there with a disposable film camera which I managed to keep inside. Girl Taking Water was shot candidly on a regular day in that ‘camp.’

These images have never been seen before. Nor have I ever opened up about my teen years in cults and institutions or what it was like to live that way; the worthlessness we felt as young women - as girl children. Misplaced, misfit, and discarded youths  who were sent away, locked up, or just drifting from one place to another. With no sense of belonging - we were neglected and angry and broken from an early age. In a lonely, strange place onto places. 

There was an instant connection to Hole from the first moment I heard them at age 12. Pretty On The Inside was one of the first albums I ever had. Later, I read Courtney’s biography and felt so seen. Hole gave a voice to everything I was living and feeling and a ‘fuck you’ energy that actually gave me power to persist, like a psychic shield. Courtney Love inspired me to take up the guitar and write songs. Hole helped shape me as an artist.

Listening to Pretty On the Inside now and looking at these images, they are linked. This is some of my earliest work and it feels amazing to be able to connect it to the album and share it with people in celebration of Hole and Courtney Love’s work. For me, sharing the art I was making around the time I was listening to this album makes more sense than creating something brand new now.