Spanish-born Marcella Barceló’s work invites us to inhabit a mysterious world, to join her in a personal exploration through images that feel strangely familiar, almost classically referential in composition, but are, at the same time, fresh, youthful, and alive in composure and character. New Zealand artist, Virginia Leonard, has described clay as a proxy for her own body and the white cube of the exhibition space a proxy for the medical spaces in which she has spent so much time.
The paintings of Marcella Barceló contain an autobiographical dimension; outdoor scenes recall memories of her childhood that included hot summers spent on the island of Majorca. Influenced by Balthus, Lewis Carroll, Nabokov and Laura Kasischke, a disturbing metaphorical strangeness emerges from her work. Crossed by the recurring figures of ghostly adolescents, it seems to hesitate between wonder and pain. Marcella’s work has been included in many prestigious exhibitions and collections. In 2014, she participated in the Biennale de Dessin Contemporain de Paris and in following year, she was awarded the Prix du Dessin Contemporain of the Beaux-Arts de Paris.
Addressing issues of personal trauma, injury and chronic pain, Virginia Leonard uses her material to build large scale, highly emotive and powerful sculptural objects. She uses glazes of pinks, white and reds, vibrant blues, yellows and golds that emulate the oozing and deformations that play a part in a body’s journey through illness and recovery. Her work has been acquired by a number of public collections including the Art Gallery of South Australia; the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Australia and Musée Ariana, Geneva.
The supporting programme features a reading by poet and writer Carmen Campo Real who has been commissioned to write a personal response to a work of Virginia Leonard.
Image credit: (detail) Marcella Barceló, photography by Gregory Copitet. Courtesy of Taste Contemporary.
