Nicholas Elliott Presented by B-STORE 24a Savile Row London 14 March-10 May
B- STORE is pleased to present a solo exhibition of installation – The Gates of the Gods by Nicholas Elliott. The show is made up of two installations one named after the title of the exhibition and ‘Prometheus series 2008.
Prometheus one of the Titans, an immortal God of fire, (creator of man) was punished by Zeus for stealing fire, and thwarting his attempt at destroying man which is how he came to be bound and tortured. Of Prometheus “ Not only did he give fire to humans but, according to Aeschylus, he was responsible for a host of other cultural benefits he taught man to build houses, to distinguish the seasons and understand the signs of the stars, to use numerals and letters, to yoke oxen, to tame horses, to sail ships, to manufacture medicines, to foresee the future, and to interpret dreams and other warnings, Humans previously as helpless as children, were taught by Prometheus to think and see (Prometheus Bound 422-506) During the day an eagle would consume his liver only for the organ to grow in time for the next dawn. The piece seeks to reinterpret this myth, the gift of fire by Prometheus to Man is seen to symbolise technology, and in the installation Prometheus is represented as a man-like machine. Prometheus is the culmination of mans technological revolution, inorganic made no longer from flesh and blood humanities complete devolution from Nature. In response we see the battle between the natural world and the machine.
‘The Gates of the Gods’ is the sight of ritual between two spectral skeletons. The piece is an amalgamation of different forms of worship. Shamanic ideas lack the institutional framework and the centralization that other forms of worship have and in doing so can be adapted for any place and time which is apt for the society we live in which bastardisation of culture is rife. The work conveys that death and birth are cyclical parts of nature. The Knight kneels on the back of a turtle shell. The turtle is regarded differently in a number of religions in the Far East, the shell was a symbol of heaven, and the square underside was a symbol of earth and so was seen as an animal whose magic united heaven and earth. In the West, early Christians viewed them as symbolizing evil forces during war and in Greece, turtles were once believed to be citizens of hell. The Shaman who stands over the Knight is healing or initiating him. The two crows are symbolic more of the spiritual aspect of death, or the transition of the spirit into the afterlife, although they have long been associated with death and pestilence and as harbingers of doom for there diet of carrion within European folklore. The scarab beetle is an Egyptian symbol for regeneration and resurrection. The installation looks at our western appropriation of variant culture for the creation of our own homogenised belief systems.
