Private View: Thursday, the 25th of April 2024, 6-8pm
London (Tower Bridge), 36 Tanner Street, SE1 3LD
Curated by Soheila Sokhanvari and Kristin Hjellegjerde.
Mirror, Mirror, a group show curated by Soheila Sokhanvari and Kristin Hjellegjerde and Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery, Tower Bridge, brings together fifteen artists whose work explores the rich and varied symbolism of mirrors. Featuring painting, sculpture, photography, mixed media and conceptual work, the exhibition examines how reflection can be used to evoke ideas around narcissism, truth, trauma and identity.
‘With this exhibition, we were interested in exploring how contemporary artists are bringing their own symbolism to an ancient theme,’ says Soheila Sokhanvari whose own interest in mirrors takes root in her cultural identity. She recalls visiting the Shah Cheragh mosque in Shiraz, Iran where she grew up and being mesmerised by the geometric-patterned mirrors that decorated the walls while her childhood home was covered in mirrors by her father, who was also an artist. In Sokhanvari’s miniature paintings, mirrors create instances of doubling, to reveal hidden truths and to bend the viewer’s perspective. Her sculptural works meanwhile use physical mirrors to not only evoke the language of Islamic architecture and devotional objects, but to also invite the viewer into the work.
Evie O’Connor’s paintings document her grandmother’s daily ritual of trimming her hair. Every day she sits in the same spot in her kitchen and balances a pink mirror in the lid of her make-up box. Presenting us with different angles of the same intimate scene, O’Connor explores comfort that this kind of vanity can bring. British artist Eileen Cooper’s portrait paintings also depict women holding or gazing into mirrors but what is reflected is more unsettling. We glimpse not just the likeness of her subjects, but another version of the self as well as elements that are absent from the main image – details of their surrounding or, in Object of Desire, another figure. The disconnect between the main image and the reflection creates a powerful sense of longing that contemplates the performance of identity as well as the expectations placed on women. In a similar way, Sarah Maple uses herself as a conduit to challenge gender stereotypes. In the work, She’s Not Your Clone the artist appears alongside her mother and her daughter, all dressed in the same black suit and tie while a framed photograph of her grandmother is propped up on a chair beside them. The image references Maple’s mixed cultural heritage while also questioning the ways in which our identity is shaped by others.
Ideas of doubling and the blurred boundary between the self and the other are also recurring themes in both Bertram Hasenauer and Jonny Briggs’s work. For this exhibition Hasenauer presents a portrait in which a female figure appears twice, once in profile and once gazing directly out at the viewer. While identical in appearance, the figure facing forwards is slightly less defined, as if she is gradually fading into the background – it’s unclear whether she is a reflection, a twin, or a spectre of a former self. Briggs, meanwhile, presents a diptych comprising two identical framed cracked mirrors in which the viewer is confronted by their own split reflection. The cracks, which are themselves mirrored, suggest an act of violence or a repeat accident while the skewed way in which the works lean in towards one, as if they have fallen off their fixings, alludes to the aftermath of the impact and perhaps, an attempt at a cover up. Tim Head’s Equilibrium (1975), on loan from a private collection, similarly uses the mirroring to build a sense of threat. The monochromatic photograph depicts a square piece of glass balancing on the tip of a knife, which is reflected to suggest there are two knives pointing inwards towards one another.
In San Francisco-based artist Jamie Luoto’s painting They Make Us What We Were Not – part of a series of self-portraits exploring the lasting psychological impact of sexual assault – reflection is used to evoke feelings of dissociation. Here, a female figure stands at a bathroom sink, the back of her body and the room in shadow while candles and a mirror reveal her to be naked and wearing a white mask. Her right hand meanwhile hovers above a large carving knife. The uncanny potential of a mirror is also explored in Yugoslavian artist Jelena Telecki’s eerily beautiful monochromatic painting Shame (Black Mirror), which depicts a shadowy figure in a top hat surrounded by a silvery cloud of what looks like smoke. Who is this man? The dark ghost of someone we can’t see? Similarly, a sculpture by Romanian artist Ciprian Muresan contemplates the ability of mirrors to conjure and distort. The paper sculpture of a head hides a pinhole camera that will take photographs throughout the opening evening of the exhibition which will later be displayed. Due to the long exposure, the figures captured in these images appear as hazy shadows, dark smudges in space.
British artist Stephen Chambers’s series of paintings Obsidian Mirrors, meanwhile,draws on the supernatural associations with the mirrors produced in Latin America. These mirrors were made from a polished black material that was naturally produced in areas of volcanic activity and were believed by both the Aztecs and the 16th-century astrologer John Dee to have magical powers. In Chambers’ work they appear against vividly coloured backgrounds as mysterious floating portals. Libation to Huītzilōpōchtli, a suspended bronze sculpture by Michael Petry, also makes reference to ancient and occultish belief systems. Huītzilōpōchtli was the Aztec god of the sun and war to whom offerings of human hearts, ripped from the bodies of slaves, were made. The serrated-edged sculpture appears both as a sun, with a reflective mirror on one side, and as a weapon, the patinated bronze evoking the appearance of dried blood.
Lest Demons Enter, a video work by Rachel Garfield, similarly explores ideas around ritual, recognition, mis-recognition and estrangement. In Jewish tradition mirrors are covered in the first seven days after a death as it is believed that demons may use them to enter into a person’s soul during this vulnerable time. In Garfield’s film footage of mirrors being covered in people’s homes merge with demons from Hollywood and medieval illustrations, creating both sense of drama and a feeling of disorientation.
Jon Kipps’ wall-based sculpture Life’s Question is part of an ongoing series that explores the visual language of symbols and how we are encouraged to interpret and perceive the objects that make up our surrounding environment. Unlike traditional symbols, which are designed to convey a linear message, Kipps’ sculptures combine a range of influences and source imagery to create a deliberate ambiguity. This work, in particular, plays with our perception of materiality by using low-fi materials which have been dyed and spray painted. British artist Robert McNally’s large-scale mixed media work on paper Mono no Aware, meanwhile, explores ideas of transience, impermanence and human fallibility. The highly detailed scene depicts a variety of mirrors and reflections, both physical and metaphorical, with parts of the image reflecting one another in private conversation. ‘A mirror is a drama masquerading as a snapshot,’ says McNally, ‘the reflection contains all the vestiges memory allows – constantly rewritten like a palimpsest – and its image is inconsistent, subject to the interpretation of the individual.’
This idea of instability runs throughout the exhibition. Highly original in style and approach, these are all works that contain and invite multiple perspectives, that unsettle our sense of space and challenge our expectations of what an image can be.
