Review of Klimt and Antiquity: Erotic Encounters at the Lower Belvedere, Vienna

12/09/17

Klimt and Antiquity: Erotic Encounters

Lower Belvedere, Vienna

23 June – 8 October 2017

In 1898, Gustav Klimt (1862-1918) designed the poster for the first exhibition held by the newly founded Vienna secession, of which he was a founding member and president. The depiction of the Greek hero Theseus wrestling the Minotaur symbolised the intention of the young avant-garde movement to break with the past and rebel against the out-dated structures of the Künstlerhaus. On the right-hand-side, standing watch is the figure of Pallas Athena, the goddess of wisdom, craft, and war in ancient Greek mythology. Turned thus into a sphinx-like demon, an image that was repeated on the catalogue for this first exhibition, as well as on bookplates for the movement, the goddess emerged as the patron saint and symbol of the Vienna secession. Klimt’s use of symbolism embodied one of its key ideals.

Read the full review here

Interview with Amelia Critchlow & Evy Jokhova re Mimesis at Westminster Reference Library

29/12/15

Amelia Critchlow & Evy Jokhova: Mimesis

Westminster Reference Library, London

9 December 2015 – 2 January 2016

Brought together by their common interest in mimicry as a visual metaphor for the workings of society, Evy Jokhova (b1984) and Amelia Critchlow (b1972) have spent the past year communicating – sometimes face to face, sometimes by post, sometimes by social media – sending found objects and sharing ideas, making suggestions and trialling new methods. The result is this curious and deliberately absurd collaborative installation at the Westminster Reference Library: a waiting room space by Jokhova, comprising balance-challenging foam stools; a huge, draping corporate flag; two parts of a triptych based on the British Museum’s The Three Graces; and a strange and materially intriguing totem-cum-console providing a lectern for an iPad, on which an eight-minute film of the artist carving a temple out of cheese – House for a Mouse – plays on a loop. The walls of this “foyer” are adorned with Critchlow’s evacuated collages – pages from books and magazines, where images have been erased or cut away, “the detritus of popular culture”, eerily unknown yet uncannily familiar.

Both artists are interested in social structures and narratives – and where they – and we – stand in these narratives.  Through their work, they both enact and deconstruct mimesis – from the Greek mimos, meaning an imitator or actor, or source of mimesis – to consider the architecture, physical and metaphorical, of social order, from antiquity to the present day.

Watch this interview here