Double Persephone

About

Double Persephone investigates how memory, imagery, and the body are mediated and redefined within the fragmented and often alienated nature of contemporary life. Each of the artists engage in a delicate process of capturing and reconstructing the familiar, using paint as a vehicle for translating found imagery and personal recollections into new visual languages that explore the tension between figuration and abstraction.

The exhibition shares its title with the seminal poem by Margaret Atwood, a complex exploration of the Greek myth of Persephone. The ‘double’ in the title refers to the dual nature of Persephone, both as a young, innocent maiden in spring and as ruler of the dark underworld. Atwood’s writing combines elements of mythology with modern sensibilities, and is an intricate mediation on women’s identity, power, agency, and the complexities of their roles within personal and societal contexts.

Celia Hempton’s paintings, performances and installations investigate the blurred lines of comfort and consent; desire and subjugation; visibility and opacity, seeking to deconstruct the ways in which we engage with humans in a rapidly evolving age of hyper-mediation. Formally, Hempton’s paintings, which range in scale from intimate to life-size, acknowledge the tropes of history painting and the often subjugated female body. Painted in thick expressionistic brushstrokes, Yavuz, Turkey, 25th May 2024 is a work from Hempton’s ongoing series Chat Random which depicts strangers she met while browsing online webcams on the website chatrandom.com. Here, Hempton presents the cropped torso of a figure in blues, purples and pinks, evoking the cool glow of a laptop. Acting as a painterly documentation of a specific encounter, the painting is deeply intimate yet the tight cropping, anonymised background, and expressionistic rendering of the face highlight the physical and emotional remove of this experience.

Laura Lancaster’s work centres around the figure, often abstracting its presence, which is intensified by the manipulation of paint, creating ambiguous and surreal imagery. The inspiration for Lancaster's paintings is found photographs, cine films and slides of strangers. Lancaster's process-orientated practice forms an ongoing dialogue between the languages of painting and photography, focusing on the tension between the visceral qualities of the paint and the image it depicts. Send Me Away by Lancaster features an isolated female figure in a small rowing boat gliding across a partially shaded, tranquil body of water. Utilising her signature approach of wide brushstrokes and an engergetic handling of paint, the figure becomes almost indistinguishable from the lush foliage and surroundings gently reflected in the surface of the water. The quiet intimacy and dreamlike quality of the scene is undercut by a sense of voyeurism, as though the viewer is witnessing a private moment. Lancaster’s approach draws us into a liminal space where the familiar slips into the realm of the uncanny – a woman adrift in space.

Similarly to Lancaster’s painting Send Me Away, Splitting and Projection by Lucy Stein portrays a figure simultaneously appearing and disappearing into a rich and intense red background. The swirling and raw gestural marks, create a sense of chaos and movement that sit in stark contrast to the doubled stoic skeletal forms that are framed in the centre of the canvas. The faint trace of a dress can be discerned around the spectral forms and a large arrow becomes almost an extension of one of the figure’s arm, conveying an impression that they are caught between states of being. The echoed presence of the figure intensifies the ambiguity, adding to the notion of transformation. The imagery and narratives presented here are drawn from Stein's study of psychoanalysis, feminist theory, esoteric histories, and personal experience. Continuing to embody the concept of the unstable narrator, Stein creates her own mythology where different painterly styles coexist. She shifts selves, becoming ever more expressive, allowing herself to perform different roles.

In Double Persephone Phoebe Unwin presents two works, Snow City and Area of Sun, both of which continue her distinctive exploration of how to capture and reconstruct the familiar. Both paintings are made without any source material other than her memory of fleeting moments or objects from daily life. In these works she generates dense and saturated layers of oil paint that gradually evolve into other-worldly renditions of faintly recognisable forms. Her loose brushwork and soft colour palette produce a meditative quality that evoke feelings of quietude and reflection. Amidst an ever-accelerating circulation of imagery in contemporary culture, these paintings carve out an uncanny yet intimately seductive space.