A stunning collection of paintings, sculpture and decorative art from the 13th century to the present day.
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A stunning collection of paintings, sculpture and decorative art from the 13th century to the present day.
John Moores 2010
This exhibition is being held at the Walker Art Gallery, 18 September 2010 - 3 January 2011
2008,
Oil and pigment on gesso board,
48 x 60.5 cm
I select early Renaissance depictions of space; landscapes that provided the background (supplement) to a scene or story (argument). The landscape elements were secondary and were employed to frame the narrative. I change the format and scale and remove all narrative elements, freeing the spaces from their historical context. This translates the landscapes into a contemporary framework, thereby allowing a direct engagement with them. These alterations and omissions let the landscapes exist as discrete creations rather than subsidiary to the stories they frame. This particular painting is taken from one of Giotto's frescos in the Magdalene Chapel in the Lower Basilica in Assisi.
The title
refers to Giotto's technique of repeating this landscape motif in several works in the
chapel and also to the fact that his work is considered a model in the development of
Renaissance painting, marking the beginning of a certain way of seeing.
My paintings show these landscapes removed from their original context. They are
painted using traditional materials, but stop short of being identical in their material
application. They have travelled from the early Renaissance to the present, acting as
counterpoints to our modern visuality, posing a question for the way we see and
represent space.
Born in Crawley in 1971, Henrietta Simson
attended UWE Bristol 1990-93 and The
Slade School of Fine Art London 2005-
07 (commences MPhil/PhD 2010).
Group exhibitions include 'Jerwood
Drawing Prize 2005' Jerwood Space
London (touring), 'Bloomberg New
Contemporaries' A Foundation (Liverpool
Biennial) & Rochelle School London 2006, 'spaces/places/senses/places/senses/spaces' (with Jo Volley) Visual Arts Centre
Portsmouth Virginia 2009, 'Lulled into
Believing' (with Esther Teichmann) Man&Eve London 2009 and 'The
Borrowed Loop' Man&Eve 2010. Solos
include 'Drawing and Painting' Slade
Summer School 2007, 'Over the Frontier' Man&Eve 2008, 'Lost Narratives' Slade
Research Centre 2008 and presentation in 'Volta NY' (Man&Eve) New York 2010.