Exhibitions:
Imagined Women
Polish Centre
238 - 246 King Street
Hammersmith
London
W6 DRF

27 May - 8 June 2007
Open daily from 11am to 9pm

Lorraine Fernie used to make sculpture, first in wood, then in clay. She is now working in two dimensions and this is the first exhibition of her pastel drawings. The influence of sculpture is quite clear: all the works shown here have a sense of weight, mass and movement in space.

In each drawing the women are depicted naked and isolated; the trappings of fashion, status and specificity become immaterial to the viewer and the artist. They are surrounded by dark lines which serve to flatten and confine them while also giving them visual strength and clarity.

Women are, by definition, obliged to recognise fecundity as central to their lives. A prominent place is therefore given in Imagined Women to secondary reproductive characteristics such as breasts and soft flesh. The results of ageing, bruising, and feeling are also used as positive elements to build up an image of a human being totally engaged with some aspect of being alive.

The figures are drawn from a low vantage point, making the head appear small. This disturbs the strongly held view that our minds play a larger role in moulding our character than our bodies. Both power and vulnerability are emphasised by the viewpoint and the mind is assumed to express a response through the body.

May 2007.


On Saturday May 12 2007, the Financial Times ran a supplement on Drawing. It contains articles on "The UBS collection at Tate Modern", "How to buy" and "Corporate Collecting", as well as one by Richard Cork entitled "The Stubborn Art". Cork maintains that, despite historically not being considered finished works of art, then being considered private, and then with Conceptualism being discarded altogether, drawing now "appears to be enjoying a resurgence of interest in terms of adventurous work." In his discussion of the wide range of exhibitions currently featuring drawing he writes that the Imagined Woman have "monumental impact" and that they would "reward scrutiny"
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