24/9/2008
David Birkin & Eloise Fornieles
Sketch, London
For this new series of works, the two artist photographed themselves holding intimate and tender positions to the point of exhaustion. Each image records a transition, from pleasure to intense pain: the long exposures merging the two figures as their bodies gradually move under the strain of holding one another.
Primeval man was round, his back and sides forming a circle; and he had four hands
and the same number of feet, one head with two faces looking opposite ways, set on a
round neck and precisely alike. Terrible was their might and strength, and the
thoughts of their hearts were great, and they made an attack upon the gods. Doubt
reigned in the celestial councils. Should they kill them and annihilate the race
with thunderbolts? Then there would be an end to the sacrifices and worship which
men offered; but, on the other hand, the gods could not suffer their insolence to be
unrestrained. At last, Zeus discovered a way. He said: 'Methinks I have a plan which
will enfeeble their strength and so extinguish their turbulence; men shall continue
to exist, but I will cut them in two and then they will be diminished in strength
and increased in numbers.
They shall walk upright on two legs, and if they continue
insolent and will not be quiet, I will split them again and they shall hop about on
a single leg.' He spoke and cut men in two, like a sorb-apple which is halved for
pickling, or as you might divide an egg with a hair. After the division, the two
parts of man, each desiring his other half, came together, throwing their arms about
one another, entwined in mutual embraces, longing to grow into one. These are the
people who pass their whole lives together, and yet they could not explain what they
desire of one another. For the intense yearning which each of them has towards the
other does not appear to be the desire of lover's intercourse, but of something else
which the soul evidently desires and cannot tell, and of which she has only a dark
and doubtful presentiment.
Aristophanes' Speech from Plato's Symposium
For this new series of works, Birkin and Fornieles photographed themselves holding
intimate and tender positions to the point of exhaustion. Each image records a
transition, from pleasure to intense pain: the long exposures merging the two
figures as their bodies gradually move under the strain of holding one another.
Sponsored by My Beautiful City
Image: Eloise Fornieles, Mal Gusto Dresses 2006, Designed by Kirstie McCloud Collaboration with Kate Hawkins Mixed Media h 151 x w 97cm Unique diptych
Private View Thursday 25 September 2008, 7 - 9 PM
Sketch
9 Conduit Street - London