STRONGMEN: Power, Myth, and Afterlife

About

For over half a century, Vaughan Grylls has made works inspired by gathered fragments—personal, monumental, domestic, and theatrical— the lives and legacies of men who once held the world in thrall.

From Stalin’s modest birthplace to Ceaușescu’s unmade bed, from the creepily cute geometry of SS private housing in Berlin to the looming presence of the Voortrekker Monument in Pretoria, these images ask: what remains of totalitarian power once it has passed?

Some relics are physical—buildings, statues, and carefully preserved sites. Others are ritualistic—public meetings, gestures, uniforms, flags—still alive with borrowed grandeur. 

Even the most ordinary objects—bedsheets, paving stones, podia, automobiles -become charged with the weight of history when tied to men of domination. 

One of Grylls’ latest works, is an astonishing panorama of a Trump rally, shot in a Michigan school sports hall on his iPhone, days before the November US General Election. Captured mid-chant, the event becomes a living relic, infused with nostalgia and religious devotion, echoing past cults of personality while feeding a present one. 

Together, the works in this exhibition invite viewers to reflect on how totalitarian power is remembered, sanctified, or occasionally forgotten. 

Vaughan Grylls does not moralise; he observes. These are his often-troubling relics of strongmen — his traces of a world not always gone.