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Herculean Trial for Show that views the Past within the Present
A 500-year-old painting with a mythological subject is the inspiration for The Past within the Present, an intimate exhibition of contemporary work opening at the Barber Institute of Fine Arts on 3 October.
Hercules and Deianira, painted in 1517 by the Netherlandish artist Jan Gossaert, is one of the most evocative works in the University of Birmingham-based gallery’s collection. It has now become the starting point for artists Anita Taylor and George Blacklock, who have created original works of their own in response to the Northern Renaissance masterpiece.
Taylor and Blacklock are both tutors at Wimbledon College of Art, and, together with colleague Keir Smith (now sadly deceased), they approached the Barber Institute in 2007 with a proposal for an exhibition of work based on a painting in the gallery. Historical works of art had for many years inspired their own practices, and the trio had previously formed the research group ‘The Past within the Present’, which investigated how the art of the past informed their respective, and highly distinct, practices.
Choosing the 16th-century oil painting by Gossaert (known as Mabuse), Taylor focused on the vignettes carved in the lovers’ seat, which tell the story of Hercules and his wife Deianira. According to classical mythology, Nessus the centaur provided Deianira with a potion formulated to secure Hercules’s love and fidelity, but which was in fact deadly. She smeared the potion on her husband’s tunic, which, when worn, corroded his flesh — and thus unwittingly killed him.
Taylor says: ‘I was attracted to Gossaert’s painting because of the intimacy, both in the scale of the work and in the depiction of the subject, with the close erotic entanglement of the legs.’
Blacklock’s work is a more abstract interpretation of the theme, with his paintings’ bold colours and twisted, intertwining shapes. He has described his work as being like ‘a jazz musician’s rephrasing of a standard — pulling at the scenes and basically taking liberties with it, before putting it back together again in a form that invests the iconography with yet more “intertwined” formality’.
The Barber’s Education Officer, Brian Scholes, who is curating the exhibition, said: ‘We have organized a number of exhibitions where contemporary artists have produced new work in response to old masters in the collection, including the Singh Twins’ portrait miniatures based on Rossetti’s The Blue Bower in 2000, and the show Fates by Katherine M Waters earlier this year, when Katherine created a series of papier-mâché sculptures inspired by Mazzoni’s The Three Fates. The Past within the Present continues that practice and explores the similarities within Taylor’s and Blacklock’s work, as well as celebrating their unique and different styles.’
Director Ann Sumner added: ‘Exhibitions where contemporary artists work in response to the art of the past are often a good way of making historic works in a collection more accessible to a modern audience, and we are very pleased to be displaying these highly individual and exciting contemporary works that do just this.’
29 September 2008
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| For further information, please contact Andrew Davies, Barber Press and Marketing Officer, on 0121 414 2946 or andrewdavies@barber.org.uk |