Please join Elena Murgia to celebrate the opening of her solo exhibition on Saturday 4 November 3 – 5pm – all welcome!
About the exhibition:
As a fashion designer in Italy driven by both fabrics and beauty I often wrangled with the dichotomy between quality and image. Image can be compelling, playful, even ephemeral and too easily can become shallow. Quality is, for me, a given, the true substance of things without which inner beauty is absent.
In today’s world the tension of this dualism is all around us.
Tension was always present in my best work and as I started to sculpt in ceramic, marble, bronze and other materials the play between an authentic inner elegance and the masks we wear to face the outside world continue to be the engine of my creative process.
MIND+MATER is a body of work that explores the perception and value – the fabric – of womankind.
The image of woman is perennially defined by men through art and fashion for her biological and erotic value alone. Giacometti’s “Spoon Woman”, 1927, evokes the silhouette of the female form where the spoon represents the womb and hips that nourish humanity.
Nearly a century later, social media empowers women to redefine their own version of beauty, yet too often their worth is reduced to lips and curves. Among the influencers then, continue to lurk past male generations, still confining women to the role of life carriers and erotic objects.
This exhibition aims to celebrate women, yes, as givers of life but importantly, for once, as feeders of the mind. Think about that.
About the artist:
Graduating in Fashion Design at Florence University, Italy, Elena Murgia began working with ceramics in London in 2013 and relocated to Sydney in 2017 where her practice is primarily in bronze, marble and ceramics.
Her sculptures are psychological portraits, inviting the viewer’s own intimate interpretation.
Elena sums it up: “My interest is the human – more often the female – psychology related to its necessity to be beautiful, but also to escape from the shackle of women’s representation seen through a male gaze”.
MIND+MATER
4 November – 17 December 2023
Clara Street Gallery: 1A Clara Street Erskineville
Open Mon – Fri, 10am – 1pm or by appointment.
Ph: 02 9565 4851
E: admin@tbsss.org.au
