Alice Maher
dal 1/5/2003 al 31/5/2003
Segnalato da
1/5/2003
Alice Maher
Purdy Hicks Gallery, London
The artist continues her investigations into different materials through an imaginative new series of photo works. Using Renaissance portraiture as a reference and herself as the model, she has staged eleven strange and often starting tableaux.
PORTRAITS 2003
Photoworks and Drawings
For Alice Maher's second solo exhibition at Purdy Hicks Gallery she continues her
investigations into different materials through an imaginative new series of
photo works. Using Renaissance portraiture as a reference and herself as the
model, she has staged eleven strange and often starting tableaux. Collecting
the materials about her as she has always done, but in this case using them to
`dress' herself rather than to make sculpture, she blurs the boundaries
between body and material, between inside and outside.
Helmet of snails, crown of twigs, necklace of tongues, collar of hearts, sleeve of yew
- all are ima!
ges of the body in metamorphosis. It is as if when she sat to have her
likeness taken, the likeness itself turned inside out and came up with something
altogether different.
Maher invests her self portraits with a terrible
and profound knowledge of the natural world. Yet they are not truly fearful
images. In many she expresses a playful surprise at what is happening to
herself, amazed at the transformations that can occur as the body brings forth
its imaginings. The rich red of the backgrounds, the different textures and
surfaces captured, give the portraits an opulence that compliments the
simplicity of the poses, mixing old and new, funny and profound, to great
effect.
Alongside the photoworks Maher will show her new series of
charcoal drawings, also based on Renaissance portraiture. These almost all take
the form of silhouettes where the transformation of the body is seen in complete
profile. Branches grow out of a head, goosefeet out of a throat,!
foxtail from a chest, and all executed in the most dense and many lay
ered charcoal on rich textured arches paper, with the charcoal dust forming a
kind of halo around each happening. These are portraits from another era
transformed through a contemporary imagination into something magic and refined.
They perform extremely well as the `shadows' of their more manifest photo
companions, adding another material and psychological dimension to an already
multi layered body of work.
Purdy Hicks Gallery
Telephone 020 7 401 9229
Fax 020 7 401 9595