Exhibition
Some Roses and Their Phantoms
30 Apr 2024 – 4 May 2024
Regular hours
- Tue, 30 Apr
- 11:00 – 21:00
- Wed, 01 May
- 11:00 – 18:00
- Thu, 02 May
- 11:00 – 18:00
- Fri, 03 May
- 11:00 – 18:00
- Sat, 04 May
- 11:00 – 18:00
Free admission
Address
- 183-185 Bermondsey Street
- (adjacent to White Cube Bermondsey)
- London
England - SE1 3UW
- United Kingdom
Travel Information
- C10 Victoria to Canada Water (Stop F Bermondsey Street)
- London Bridge - Borough
'Here some roses from a very different garden sit?, lie?, stand?, gasp, dream?, die? – on white linen' all-female exhibition based on a Dorothea Tanning painting
About
PRIVATE VIEW - 30 APRIL 6 to 9pm - ALL WELCOME PLEASE JOIN US
We are excited to announce our forthcoming exhibition 'Some Roses and Their Phantoms'. In this all-female exhibition artists Sandra Beccarelli, Camilla Bliss, Miranda Boulton, Florence Reekie and Sue Williams A'Court, each re-examine the narrative behind Surrealist artist Dorothea Tanning’s painting, Some Roses and Their Phantoms.
'Here some roses from a very different garden sit?, lie?, stand?, gasp, dream?, die? – on white linen. They may serve you tea or coffee. As I saw them take shape on the canvas I was amazed by their solemn colors and their quiet mystery that called for – seemed to demand – some sort of phantoms. So I tried to give them their phantoms and their still-lifeness' Dorothea Tanning 1952
On Tanning's laid table her roses are scattered like sad, misshaped animal-like creatures, brown from being picked and left to dry. A crumpled napkin, an un-ironed tablecloth with fold marks visible cover the surface of the table. The teapot has mutated into a mantis-like creature, a large rose peeps from behind the table - watching, waiting. A china plate can be to the domestic and bourgeois ritual of 'table laying’.
As contemporary female artists, how do they relate and question as Tanning did our expectations of what a still life painting is?
Painted in 1952 some 10 years after the end of Surrealism Tanning felt female artists had still not gained the recognition they deserved. Tanning’s other paintings of that era The Rose and the Dog, and Poached Trout also refer to the despondency of domestic life, this offers a complete change to the ten years since her optimistic self portrait 'Birthday', a strong visual image of her, prepared to show herself, a strong women dominating the visual space, sexually charged, the multiple recession of doors showing the exciting adventures that lay ahead.
