3rd-10th December 2022
Private View: Friday 2nd December, 6-8 pm
Trio, 6A Florence Road, London, SE14 6TW
Send Nudes re-examines the tradition of the female nude, subverting established iconographies with a trashy attitude and a loud aesthetic.
The exhibition investigates contemporary interpretations of the subject of the female nude and finds a subversive new current to be emerging from this tradition. These works reflect a change in focus from the idealised symbols of physical perfection embodied by classical depictions of Vensu or Madonna by male artists. The young women artists selected for this exhibition are developing a new language of the nude which represents the awkward, messy and grimly functional aspects of their existence.
Noemi Conan’s uncanny scenarios depict exaggerated, unapologetic, tit-milking, rubber-glove-wearing women’s bodies. She challenges tired notions of the female body as an object of worship with these feral nudes which subvert archetypal notions of female domesticity.
Constanza Pulit’s works further explore the messiness of female sexuality but take a darker, less comedic route. Conceived from memories of the fables that she grew up with, her nudes conjure mythological narratives and are often intense and psychologically invasive. She soaks and batters her screenprints, often to the point where her images are eroded by the deliberately damaging process, leaving a desolate nude.
Juliana Futter shares Pulit’s interest in mythology and it’s relationship with historical depictions of the female nude. Her digital prints satirise the pristine statues and angelic maidens of art history to make space for honest depictions of women’s experience in 2022.
Hazel Seppings’ practice also represents her uniquely female perspective, documenting scenarios from her personal life. Her works, such as I am not what you want and Forget Me are often titled with remembered lines from conversations and sometimes discuss her romantic experiences.
Shivangi Ladha’s female nudes take a more philosophical path, exploring the body and its relationship to space. Through repetition, her nudes become a focus for her own meditations on the body and attempt to ‘reach a state of nothingness as space’.
Zhen Tang and Junchao Ren’s soft, fleshy sculpture Rita entangles itself with the history of the female nude, clumsily imitating poses from art history in an ugly and uncomfortable manner.
Send Nudes aims to represent a particular new current in the tradition of the female nude which perhaps reflects a time where the romance of this once-hallowed subject has been stripped ny its overexposure. These works cast the female nude in a refreshing light- fun and colourful, but also bleak, gritty and raw. They put an end to the heroism of past depictions of the female nude, eradicating he archetypal male gaze from the subject and exposing the ludicrousness of the centuries of sexualisation within this tradition.
Artists:
Noemi Conan
Juliana Futter
Shivangi Ladha
Constanza Pulit
Hazel Steppings
Zhen Tang & Junchao Ren
With finger licking good sweetness from Olga Paczka
Curated by Nina De Maria, Elisha Fall & Robin Spalding
