Louisa Mahony
Courtesy of the artist and Schwartz Gallery, London
LOUISA MAHONY
Hourglass Marries Egg
19 November - 13 December 14
Opening hours: Thursday - Saturday 1-6 p.m
First Thursdays late opening: 4th December 6-9 p.m
Hourglass Marries Egg is an exhibition of new paintings by Louisa Mahony. These paintings, all oil on canvas and paper, occupy a position between abstraction and figuration. The gallery painted yellow provides a wrap around environment on which the works are installed. The paintings on paper take up a position as a double-sided poster wall, advertising their strange semi abstract objects. The works can be read as a cohesive installation, as well as a series of individual works.
The paintings employ various motifs that whilst appearing familiar to an audience, may not be entirely known. By incorporating a modernist vocabulary of shape and form the images make reference to still life, sculpture and cartoons. The paintings become visually polysemic, inviting both conscious and unconscious connections to be made by a viewer.A form of free indirect discourse allows the visual reference to slip on and off the painting and concurrently in and out of the viewers mind.
The title of the show, Hourglass Marries Egg, is inspired by a New York Times headline from 1958 entitled ‘Egghead weds Hourglass’, which reports on the marriage of Arthur Miller and Marilyn Monroe. It seemed to be the most unlikely union; a giant of the left-wing intellectual elite joining with the world’s undisputed sex symbol. Within the context of the newspaper headline the household names of Miller and Monroe are simultaneously reduced and magnified by these domestic symbols; they become the archetypal and disposable objects of everyday life. The human lives are condensed into pure symbol. The charge of the forms, the glamour and the tragedy...we understand the inevitable outcome.
Schwartz Gallery was founded in April 2008 by artist-curators Patrick Michalopoulos and Ismail Erbil. Questioning exhibition and display formats Schwartz Gallery has become an important platform and forum for emerging contemporary art practice and debate in East London and beyond. Since January 2014 the gallery space has re-formed into a more compact exhibition space currently allowing for a series of solo exhibitions to take place.
Louisa Mahony was born in Dublin. She attended Kingston University BA and Chelsea College of Art and Design Postgraduate study. She currently lives and works in London. She has exhibited both in this country and abroad recent group exhibitions at the Schwartz Gallery, Charlie Dutton, the Royal Academy London, the period of grace Bristol.
Favorite joke
What did the zero say to say to the eight......?
“Like your belt”
Schwartz Gallery
92 White Post lane
Hackney Wick
London E9 5EN
Schwartz Gallery
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