Claire Pestaille: The Witches After Party Goth Moth Emma Talbot, Stella Vine, Tobi Deeson, Cathy Lomax, Alex Michon, Nicky Magliulo, Mimei Thompson, Shane Waltener, Claire Pestaille "We live in a Gothic age" Angela Carter once claimed. Gripped by deadly phantoms, real terrors loom in our day-to-day hinterland of horror with its litanies of poisonous gasses and shadowy fe-fi-foe monsters. Back from the dead Gothic, the darkling underside of logic and reason returns with the flare of gory romanticism. In the midi-minuit fantastique of "Goth Moth", Wuthering Heights meshes with murderous Myra's moors, psychobilly death dolls substitute Mary Shelly's dead babies, a dark inheritance of historical appropriations replays Goya's witches and ritual abuse in Liphook recalls suburban horror. Adolescent fantasy Goth girls are culled from magazines, as psychological terrors stalk the artificial landscape where knitted cobwebs in eerie corners subvert their cosy-craft roots. Iconic dark portraits identify with their subjects troubled souls and diaphanous white dresses float like malevolent changelings. In the once upon a never-never antechamber of murder, dead babies and treachery these artists are drawn, like moths to the flame, to the darkly mysterious possibility of things not ending happily ever after. "The sleep of reason produces monsters" - Los Caprichos - Goya (1799) Exhibition: November 20 - December 19, 2004 Gallery Hours: Fri-Sun 1-6pm Transition Gallery 110a Lauriston Road UK-London, E9 Telephone +44 (0) 20 8533 7843 Email transition@huntergather.com www.transitiongallery.co.uk |
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