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BYZANTIA HARLOW | LEO ROBINSON | VICTOR SEAWARD | PAIGE PERKINS | MATT MACKEN | NORMAN HYAMS | LINDSEY MENDICK | JAKE GREWAL | LENA BRAZIN | ELLA WALKER | TAHMINA NEGMAT | CHARLOTTE EDEY | RHIANNON REBECCA SALISBURY | JESSICA WETHERLY | BILLY FRASER | ALIA HAMAOUI | REBECCA HARPER | MICHAELA YEARWOOD-DAN
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Ancient Deities seeks to reawaken a host of awe inspiring and mystical entities, bringing them back to the forefront of people’s consciousness. Gods and demons are omnipresent in our consciousness, deeply rooted in various mythologies, reinterpreted in mainstream media, films and TV programs abound with reincarnations of the old gods. The show explores what happens when we bring together a melting pot of artistic responses, assisting in this unpredicted time to help channel a reimagining of a world, reawakening the past, responding to the present, and reconceptualising the future.
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Rhiannon Rebecca Salisbury on curating the show: “I wanted to invite a group of artists whose work excites and inspires me to come together and invoke a whole world of otherness, apart from the seen reality around us. Calling upon or selecting an Ancient Deity to make an artwork from is an entirely subjective process. Whether your belief in the Deity is literal, or you resonate with the ideas they form has come to symbolise, each artist’s choice and research reveals something about their current position and standing in today’s world. What is it about the chosen God or Goddess, Demon or Spirit that captivates the imagination of the individual, and how will that be expressed creatively? My desire is that the exhibition can offer us visions to access or think about other modes of being, new pathways that are drawn from ancient wisdom, embodied in ideas that predate our current mass belief systems and structures. I hope that the spirit and experience of this show will connect, reconnect, or amplify, the awe-inspiring sense of the unknown which is abundant outside of our normative daily grind.”
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RHIANNON REBECCA SALISBURY
Lilith -
'God-images and artworks alike can be the results of material converted through creative labour into something embodied, or auratic, something almost autonomous and expressive. Within Indian cultures, gods - for example stone gods - subsist in the material that represents them: the concept of mūrti, meaning embodiment, gives statues life. Stone gods are not symbols, but manifestations. A god-image is a mnemonic tool, a material interface, carrying the connotation of a communion with the material world, and also an affirmation of the quasi-divine animative potential involved in the act of making things. Labour, the metabolism between nature and humanity, is given a human face.'
Material Gods by Hussein Mitha
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BYZANTIA HARLOW
MelusinaMelusina, 2020Jesmonite, bio resin, acrylic paint and hand crushed quartz crystals150 x 80 x 40 cm -
XVII The Stars and Melusina
Alchemical Process: Purification by water. Second card of the Albedo process. The Stars and Melusina from whose breasts emerge the two streams of life-giving fluids blood and milk.
Upright Analytical Meaning: Melusina comes into the same category as the nymphs and sirens who dwell in the watery realms. Paracelsus describes in De Pygmaeis that Melusina was originally a nymph who was seduced by Beelzebub into practicing witchcraft. She was descended from the whale in whose belly the prophet Jonah beheld great mysteries. The birthplace of Melusina is the womb of mysteries, the unconscious. It was she who warned the world of impending disaster.
Melusina can be interpreted as a water spirit and is clearly an anima figure. She appears as a variant of the mercurial serpent, which was sometimes represented in the form of a snake-woman by way of expressing the monstrous, double nature of Mercurius. She is thus anima and feminine aspects of Spirit with aspects of Mercurius.
This phase represents contact with Self, with hope, optimism, new life and possibilities. There is further work on the shadow allowing the development of the new self as the archetypal Self and Shadow are in a reciprocal unconscious relationship.
Reversed: Loss of hope, psychological trauma expressed as arrogance, pessimism, apathy. Inability to work with new opportunities or ideas.
Byzantia Harlow, Major Arcana Alchemical Tarot, divinatory meaning for The Stars and Melusina card, written in collaboration with Jungian psychoanalyst Paolo Guidi.
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REBECCA HARPER
PandoraI intend to create for this show, an alter which pays tribute to the curiosity of mankind and the ‘all giving’ ern of hope that exists in all of us.Pandora’s shrine to hope, 2020Acrylic on handmade paper mounted in a custom wood and resin frame116 x 57 cm -
VICTOR SEAWARD
PomonaPomona - the ancient Roman goddess of fruit.Fruit, 2020acrylic on 3D printed SLA with steel wire53.5 x 8.5 x 24cm -
“Old gods never really die; they only wait to be awoken in a new time”
Neil Gaiman, American Gods
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TAHMINA NEGMAT
LeviathanDemon. Leviathan, 2020Oil and beeswax on felt190 x 145 cm -
I chose Leviathan - because it feels like a big presence, quite and blue big-headed monster maneuvering underwater. It’s a long and swirly sea creature - and I'm very interested in the Odyssey like journeys on the water in all its interpretations. I’m curious about the concept of envy, as the forced concept that became a highlight feature/emotion of late capitalism: materialistic commodities, social-economic segregation, posting and boasting, advertising of one's not even life bit the lifestyle on social media, phenomena of willing to be popular and on display at all times.
I’m also curious about it regarding purely animalistic, physiological, or Freudian concepts. Mothers being envious of the daughter's youth, beauty, father's affection. Telemachus being always behind the Odysseys. I wrote a short text for the painting Demon' that was inspired by a story 'Nastya' by Vladimir Sorokin, The storyline of consumption of the girl reflects in the Leviathan's behavioral trajectories onto eating god's creatures.
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Tiamat is the primordial Babylonian Goddess of the Ocean and the personification of Chaos. She is said to have given birth to the first generation of Babylonian Gods and was later killed by the Storm God, Marduk. In her death, her body was divided and from this came Heaven and Earth. She is known to be the ‘glistening one’ and is the first goddess described to have an aura of ‘Melam’. ‘Melam’, the Sumerian word meaning ‘fearsome radiant aura’ is a type of blazing light, as if a god/goddess has put on a garment; a garment to be like rays rising and surrounding the deity, a ‘mantle of radiance’. This Melam was said to create the sensation of ‘Ni’ in humans- a physical feeling, a creeping of the flesh out of fear and splendour.
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ALIA HAMAOUI
Tiamat -
PAIGE PERKINS
ArtemisShape-Shifting Artemis: Our Lady of the Wild Things
Artemis is a powerful force who personifies the energies of nature in myriad forms. She is associated with the moon and its phases, and with her bow, she is goddess of the hunt. As Mistress of Beasts, all the animals of the forest are under Artemis’s protection. An elemental association is water, where she was seen bathing naked with her band of nymphs. Although she is herself a virgin, she is goddess of childbirth since she acted as midwife to her mother when her twin brother, Apollo was born. As an archetype, Artemis personifies an independent feminine spirit who is supportive and protective of women and the sisterhood. Today she is considered an icon of feminism. -
The Song of Amergin, opening verse, from The Golden Bough by Sir James Frazer
God speaks and says:
I am a stag of seven tines.
Over the flooded world
I am borne by the wind.
I descend in tears like dew, I lie glittering,
I fly aloft like a griffon to my nest on the cliff,
I bloom among the loveliest flowers,
I am both the oak and the lightning that blasts it.
I embolden the spearman,
I teach the councillors their wisdom,
I inspire the poets,
I rove the hills like a conquering boar,
I roar like the winter sea,
I return like the receding wave.
Who but I can unfold the secrets of the unhewn dolmen?
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LEO ROBINSON
PanBlack Faun, 2020Pencil and watercolour on paper150 x 90.5 cmMy chosen deity is the Greek god Pan, or more widely the Satyrs, nature spirits of Greek mythology (the research I have been doing covers more minor Satyr gods such as Priapus). The Satyrs occupied the mountains and forests, and represent the base nature of man, his sexual deviance and also earthliness. I have in the past attempted to reconcile what Pan means in our contemporary era, both in a general sense and more specifically to myself, a city-dwelling person of colour. On one hand, questioning and deconstructing sexualisation of the black male and racist notions of “primitivism”, and on the other, analysing my own tendencies to push towards the natural, wild, earthly. One of my favourite responses to Pan, or the Satyr, is the flute and harp music made by Claude Debussy. First, his music for ballet Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune ( Afternoon of a Faun) first performed in 1912, and secondly his Sonata for Flute, Viola and Harp (1915), which isn’t specifically related to the Satyr or Faun, but to me invokes this imagery. I did work around these subjects and references for a performance in 2019 and would like to continue exploring these ideas.
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BILLY FRASER
Nuclear Focus Sculpture, 2020MDF, sand, gravel, epoxy filler, PVA, colouring, acrylic paint, spray paint, expanding foam, plaster, toner relief print, BLK3.0, finishing resin, moonstone & aerogel60 x 60 x 23 cm‘Bismuth-209 was long thought to have the heaviest stable nucleus of any element, but in 2003, a research team, discovered that 209Bi undergoes alpha decay with a half-life of approximately 19 exayears (1.9×1019, approximately 19 quintillion years), over a billion times longer than the current estimated age of the universe.' - If… post humanity, an intelligent being pursues the discovery of homosapiens or more broadly anything which has ever inhabited the earth, they will not find any trace of ancient gods of any sort. However for the next 19 quintillion a record of the Bismuth-209’s radioactive trace will remain a scar on this Earth. -
MATT MACKEN
Apollo Mourns For Hyacinthus, 2020Acrylic, ink and collage on canvas30 x 25 cm -
Love Notes (The Lava-Edge) by Marlene Dumas
I situate art not in reality but in relation to desire
Back and forth
my heart is torn
between
different lonelinessesI am the way towards death
with the breath of life on my tongue
while I leave you
your moist hand confuses youOh good God
I repeated
the whole
night throughCould you not come sooner
while it is still light
and the silence is clear and yellow
could you not come sooner
before the darkness blinds usYou don’t need the keys
the door locks behind you
automatically(. . .) -
ELLA WALKER
Back and forth my heart is torn between, 2020Acrylic on paper39.5 x 31.5 cmI have taken on the theme of the crouching goddess, Aphrodite; born of sea foam taking her ritual bath, a very popular subject in the Hellenistic period. The main figure in the painting is drawn from the archetype, a statue of the crouching Aphrodite, goddess of love and beauty, sculpted in the third or second century BC. I have a reproduction of this sculpture in a book called ‘Hellenistic Art’ which I keep in my studio and have been referring to for some paintings. My work often interprets classical narrative through drawing and painting. The small painting on paper in the exhibition is tantamount to my interest in medieval mystery, ceremonial play, pre-Roman sculpture and Renaissance art.
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NORMAN HYAMS
Hades -
MICHAELA YEARWOOD-DAN
VenusThe Summit of Beauty and Love, 2020Oil on canvas170 x 120cm
The work was made specifically for this show and draws inspiration from the purple skies of summer nights whilst being about the goddess of love, sex and beauty, Venus. Sitting in place with the work that I have been making recently this piece also references the golden ratio/ Divina proportione which compositional presents itself in the subtle coiled swirls mapping the painting out within the base layer of the painting. Considering the literary birth of Venus and the famous painting of the same name, I felt it imperative when creating a work inspired by such a famous deity to pay homage to such origins; adorning the painting in small sea shells paying homage to Botteceli, gestural interlinking swirls and a poetic quip about the bite of love. -
'Gods, in this sense, are not remote, abstract entities, but concrete configurations of sensuous matter, ways of mediating the familiar mimetic patterning that arises in life: a particular facial expression; a toy model; a weird lingering clump of human-made or chance semblances that stay with us and later repeat in sketches, dreams, artworks; configurations in clouds; a photograph of a celebrity, a familiar looking relative, or of an ancestor. Children spontaneously animate random material into semblances. Even cats will do this, imagining a toy to be a real mouse for the purpose of its play, only for the object to become dormant and inanimate once again when the cat has lost interest in it. Supposedly non-living objects are in fact just paused, waiting to receive animation. The world of everyday gods flickers in and out, throughout material culture, in stop-start rhythm. In the psychoanalysis of Melanie Klein, for example, the distinction between parts of the inanimate world and conscious beings is eroded.'
Material Gods by Hussein Mitha
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JESSICA WETHERLY
Green manGreen Man, 2020Aluminium, paper, foliage52 x 15 cmA benign character able to communicate with plants, a guardian of this world reminding us that acknowledging the consciousness of trees and plants could give us access to a wider world and awareness of the ecosystem we live in. It is one of the only anthropormisations of vegetation, a forest-god or sorts, an emblem of cycles of birth–death–rebirth and the turning of the seasons within the natural year; a reminder of forces of Nature exist despite human enterprise. There is irony in this emblem of anarchic animism holding currency within Britain where tree cover is among the sparsest in Europe.
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Please take the gift of seeds and scatter them. Waste is a human concept that does not exist in nature. By sowing seeds you are actively protesting for self sufficiency with actions based on local knowledge. . Rewilding with indigenous seeds can help address the current food, farming and climate crisis. Local food forests in urban and rural areas can help build natural and long lasting ecosystems that are beneficial for everyone.
Sow an indigenous seed. Alone or with your community, friends, strangers or lovers. Ask about them. Find them. Share them. And try not to sow the same kind twice. Diversify.
This is a message from the face of the Green Man. -
Lena Brazin
Vesta / HestiaVesta-Hestia, 2020Oil and acrylic on linen on lime wood panel75 x 60 cmI have picked Vesta... I was hesitant at first, she is not the one that is the most magical, controversial, powerful, beautiful or mystical. She is rather ordinary. Vesta is a virgin Roman goddess of domestic life, the hearth and home. Then it clicked... "Painting is my home, music is its fireplace", is a sentence I have said to myself back in the day when I started painting. I still feel the same about both painting and music, the fire in my heart. She is the one! Rarely depicted in human form and often represented by the eternal flame of her temple. She was also one of few goddesses that were immune to the spells of Venus, the goddess of love. Vesta could not be forced to love anyone. An unmarried, childless virgin representing and protecting healthy home life in ancient Rome? Is the eternal flame of Vesta representing an unconditional love in contrast to Venus´s conditional romantic love? She was worshipped in every household and the Latin word for hearth is the focus. That makes me think, what should be the center of our attention to achieve a happy, peaceful life, full of harmony, love and joy? Guidance is clear, follow and take care of the fire in your heart. -
Lindsey Mendick
CirceHot to Trot, 2020Glazed ceramic40 x 40 x 10 cmI have chosen Circe, daughter of the god Helios and the Oceanid nymph Perse. Circe was renowned for her vast knowledge of potions and herbs. A self taught witch, she was banished at a young age to the mythical island of Aeaea where she lived amongst wild animals such as lions and tigers! Through the use of her potions and a magic wand or staff, she would transform her enemies, or those who offended her, into animals. This can be seen most prominently in the Homer's Odyssey when Odysseus visits her island of Aeaeaon the way back from the Trojan War and she changes most of his crew into swine.
I have chosen Circe due to my fascination with vengeful transformation. I think I find this complicated female character so seductive due to her unflinching and remorseless violent acts of anger and jealous desire. Furthermore, Circe was also taken as the archetype of the predatory female. In the eyes of those from a later age, this behaviour made her notorious both as a magician and as a type of the sexually-free woman
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Charlotte Edey
EosEos, 2020Silk hand-embroidery on woven jacquard tapestry with freshwater pearl in walnut panels2 parts 27 x 44 cmPreceded by the Morning Star, her tears are considered to have created the morning dew. She is most often associated with her Homeric epithet "rosy-fingered", as she opened the gates of heaven for the Sun to rise. Weaving various semblances of light and awakening, dawn speaks to the significance of transition. -
JAKE GREWAL
HesperidesRaw-rib under arm /// facing forward /// I stay quiet, 2020Oil on canvas71 x 96 cm
Ancient Deities
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