Last Tuesday I was at the private view for Memória Roubada, the latest in a series of major exhibitions to be held at the Wallspace Gallery by significant contemporary artists utilising Christian imagery within the works exhibited. The work of Ana Maria Pacheco exhibits a compelling yet disturbing merging of Brazilian folklore, classical myth, mystical Catholicism and political satire.
Memoria Roubada I, exhibited here for the first time in the UK, was originally completed in 2001 for Fråvær/Absences, a touring exhibition in Norway while Memoria Roubada II is a new work produced specifically in response to the space used by Wallspace at All Hallows on the Wall.
Bookended by bookcase and cupboard, the two Memória Roubada sculptures face each other at Wallspace across a pavement of slate slabs forming a space for the contemplation of suffering.
One of the most interesting aspects of being at the private view was seeing the response of others to these works. I spoke with one man who, though he claimed to have no artistic sensitivity, felt “got in the gut” by Pacheco’s severed head of John the Baptist which, gashed by chain saw, charred by flame and pierced by nails, rests on a large wooden platter placed on the font of All Hallows on the Wall. This man is joined at the private view by a National Gallery custodian who having, like myself, walked among the disturbing and unsettling figures forming Pacheco’s Dark Night of the Soul tableau, first exhibited at the National in 1999, had been irresistibly drawn to view more of Pacheco’s work tonight. Such response is the true power of her art.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
John Lennon - Isolation.
No comments:
Post a Comment