Genieve Figgis at Almine Rech
Artist: Genieve Figgis
Venue: Almine Rech, Brussels
Exhibition Title: What we do in the shadows
Date: June 3 – July 29, 2017
Full gallery of images, press release and link available after the jump.
Images:
Images courtesy of and copyright the artist and Almine Rech, Brussels. Photos by Hugard & Vanoverschelde photography.
Press Release:
Genieve Figgis is a consummate storyteller. Using paint rather than words, her deeply narrative works—often conjuring characters and settings out of the Edwardian age of the Anglo-Irish aristocracy—fit snugly within this long tradition of Irish cultural production. While it may seem essentialist, if not a political minefield, to overemphasize national identity in critical discussions of Figgis’ work, it could be argued that what distinguishes her use of figuration from the slew of contemporary painters is a distinctive translation of the Irish “blarney” into a pictorial form. What theorists such as Eagleton wrote of nineteenth century Irish writers such as Oscar Wilde’s ambivalent relationship to Britannia could easily applied to Figgis’ own work: both conjure Anglo-Irish society at the cusp of Irish independence. A world that is infused with qualities of “violence, travesty, affection, complicity, mimicry, subversion, mutual mystification.”
– Text by Alison M. Gingeras