Opening 28 June Lorna Robertson & Birgit Jürgenssen
Lorna Robertson: 28 June – 3 August 2024
Alison Jacques presents a solo exhibition of new work by Lorna Robertson (b.1967, lives and works in Glasgow). Her first solo show in London includes new paintings made with a combination of oil paint, watercolour, collage and linseed oil on canvas and paper. These paintings sit somewhere between abstraction and figuration, as Robertson describes, ‘a tangled game of hide-and-seek that plays with the visibility and readability of an image’.
This new body of work reveals an intuitive approach to Robertson’s painterly language; larger, with a freedom of mark making rooted in improvisation, playing upon memory and layers of time. Cupboards and shelves in her studio are awash with clippings from vintage magazines and fashion photography, as well as scraps and samples of patterns and textiles. Robertson applies these ‘fragments of memories’ to canvas, juxtaposing them against ethereal colours and abstracted forms.
Robertson’s work reaches beyond representation through intimations of rhythm and harmony. Continually listening to music while painting, the playful, lyrical and emotive compositions are built up through layers and punctuated by repeat motifs with a unique and particular palette.
Birgit Jürgenssen: 28 June – 3 August 2024
Alison Jacques presents an exhibition of work by Austrian artist Birgit Jürgenssen (1949-2003). Her practice examines women’s interior lives refracted in exterior systems of power. Many of Jürgenssen’s works focus on the domestic life of a mythic figure, the ‘hausfrau’: an ideal bourgeois Austrian housewife.
This exhibition showcases the conceptual and material diversity of Jürgenssen’s work, including lesser known drawings and photographs from the 1970s and 1980s alongside previously unseen collage and painting.
The works in the exhibition trace Jürgenssen’s varied yet constant critique of prevailing hierarchies, namely the male-dominated Viennese Actionism movement, and honours her artistic avowal ‘to use all the media that were available’. A major work within the show relates to Jürgenssen’s 1988 portfolio of twenty-four drawings for Wolford, the Austrian textile manufacturer, producers of luxury hosiery and underwear. The works depict women’s disembodied legs and shoes, a recurring motif throughout the artist’s practice.
Further Information: Exhibitions – Alison Jacques