An enigma is something or someone difficult to grasp, which is inconsistent and whose veracity tends to slip away, inherently elusive. What is more elusive than the self?
These two artists who have never met before this show was curated, have much in common: both studied sociology before going on to study fine art. Both are deep thinkers and keen observers of behaviour.
As human beings, we are thrust onto a stage, our gender roles subtly scripted by the silent dialogues between our parents, the gestures exchanged in the dimly lit rooms of our childhood, and the unspoken cues we learn to follow. Our parents are the first authority we meet in this world and as we grow up, we encounter another authority at school. We question, rebel, but we are conditioned nonetheless. We react emotionally to the confusion we experience in a society which many would argue is fundamentally insane - unprincipled and unscrupulous, whose false values are the propaganda we are fed daily in the press and on social media. We learn we are expected to adjust to this greedy society, and to sustain it. According to one’s temperament, one becomes fiercely competitive within that society or overwhelmed by its bewildering injustice. Art is a way of expressing the unspeakable. Art comes out of silence.
Leahy-Clark’s self-portraits are an exploration of ‘self’.They are not traditional self-portraits, but appear as masks and draw ideas from mythology, literature, poetry as well as personal life experiences. Her masks are not a place to hide a ‘self’ but to question what the self is. We are constantly in flux, changing and mutating and adapting, something which she believes is at the core of an absurd life. The process of change and flux question what is accepted as stable and ‘normal’ - the very ideas against which the labels ‘the other’ or ‘outsider’ were created. She challenges this with humour and absurdity taking a poke at it and saying we are all other, and it is this that presents the wonderful possibility of difference. The ‘Enigma’ for Leahy-Clark is that there is no self-portrait, it’s a myth: "But what matter whether I was born or not, have lived or not, am dead or merely dying, I shall go on doing as I have always done, not knowing what it is I do, nor who I am, nor where I am, nor if I am.” (Beckett)
Roberts’ faces are almost always female. Sometimes, they can be unconsciously auto-biographical, with marks unplanned and unintended. Sometimes reminiscent of lost innocence, they seem to be yearning, or perhaps reflecting the effect of unexpected injustice, dismayed by harsh realities. In Roberts’ portraits, a sidelong glance, a raised eyebrow, a slight change in expression, all hint at the complexities of the human experience in showing how change can come out of the blue and destabilise the psyche. Some of the faces seem to emerge from stone, their emotions leaking through fissures and cracks - a slippage, a loss in their transmission of power, with contradictory feelings leading to speechlessness. Roberts’ use of monochrome in these intense small works is like poetry, its poignancy and strength lies in what’s left out.
Life cannot be grasped and fixed as it is a constant movement of which we are a part. It is an enigma. Both Leahy-Clark and Roberts are considering what it is to be, in a world of contradictions. Roberts is expressing the complexities of human experience while Leahy-Clark is pulling apart the very idea that there is a self.
~ Vivienne Roberts
From 2 October, by appointment only:
The works in this online show can be viewed in the gallery
at The Bindery, 53 Hatton Garden, London EC1N 8HN
Tel: 07971172715 Email: info@viviennerobertsprojects.com
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