LETTERE A GWEN JONE..S….VICTORIA MIRO’

Celia Paul: Memory and Desire
6 April–7 May 2022
Private view: Thursday 7 April, 6–8pm
Victoria Miro

This exhibition of new paintings coincides with the publication of Letters to Gwen John, a new Jonathan Cape book by the artist which centres on a series of letters addressed to the painter Gwen John (1876–1939), who has long been a tutelary spirit for Paul.

In the new works, the artist addresses abiding subjects: self-portraits, the artist’s studio and a last portrait of her husband. Mountain-scapes, pathways and flowers also feature prominently, their presence acting as touchstones for thoughts about transience and mortality, grief, loss and the solace of nature’s renewal.

New book
Celia Paul: Letters to Gwen John
Published 7 April 2022

Through the epistolary form, Paul draws fruitful comparisons between John’s life and her own: their shared resolve to protect the sources of their creativity, their fierce commitment to painting, and the ways in which their associations with older male artists affected the public’s reception of their work.

Limited signed copies available to purchase in the gallery bookshop.

John Kørner: Cosmopolitan Super Fruits
8 April–7 May 2022
Private view: Thursday 7 April, 6–8pm
Victoria Miro

Following Intercontinental Super Fruits, John Kørner’s recent solo exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, this exhibition builds on themes of consumerism, globalisation and networks of distribution and exchange.

Cosmopolitan Super Fruits takes as a starting point the idea of the corner shop, a place of supply and consumption familiar to us all. Always treating content with various degrees of abstraction and metaphor, in this body of work Kørner brings into focus modes of display (fruit on the tree and vine, and picked, packaged and on the shelf) and the movement of foodstuffs as they collide with aspects of contemporary politics and ecological thought in the context of ever-evolving concepts of the local, regional, national and global.