Phantasmagorica!

New works on display here at the moment. 

Our Cardinal Virtues (Fortitude, Justice, Temperance, Prudence)

Giclee prints 594mm x 420mm

Editions of 5

I’m terrible at writing about my own work, I just stick to the drawing, but I asked my good friend Steven Gregory who is good at that kind of thing to say a few words.

The first thing that strikes about Rebecca’s work is the whiteness. This is not the whiteness of winter, however: like the retinal burn of a jolted waking, these images emerge into our sudden consciousness like unexpected myths. Like the ladies within them, these pictures draw their power from a delightful overexposure. An unsettling liminality is achieved through their economy of substance. From these thin graphite foundations rises a meta-cathedral of flesh and intrigue. These ladies poise like nymphs, glimpsed through a mist of ether; they stand like sirens, beckoning us towards some Elysian Hiroshima. Or, when we examine the further content of these hallucinations, we see that this particular mermaid-song is drawing us towards jagged rocks of irony, through the juxtaposition of beautiful dreams bedecked with the trappings of ugly truths: a gun, a baton, a uniform. Enticing eroticism gives way to a strange brew of fear and pity, as we observe the violation of these contemporary Virtues by the methodologies which have been thrust upon them. The bitter irony continues in the stylistic reference: The flowing curvature nods towards the form of Art Nouveau, but instead of leading us like proud figureheads into a brave new holisticism, we find that the inevitable century has turned once again, and left them smothered with the tools, the weapons, even, of atomisation, both physical and social.

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