We are delighted to be holding the Private View of Kingdom, an exhibition by artist Miroslav Pomichal in the Wirth Gallery at Sherborne Girls.
Pomichal comments;
‘This body of work,created in Sherborne over the past several months, is somewhat of a departure for me. I have worked with the topic of medieval ruins for years now. I am fascinated by their metaphorical qualities, suggestive of both incredible physical strength and durability, but also of a yearning for the spiritual, in their pointed arches and spires reaching out to the heavens.
But all my previous work was about painting itself, and the ruin was its central metaphor: painting, an anachronistic, perhaps useless and heavy materialistic act, but aspiring to something beyond itself, something more than the physical.
In Sherborne, surrounded on all sides by the ample and ancient countryside, and by living relics, I have turned my attention to a more specific response to British ruins. I have always loved British 18th and early 19th century engravings and etchings of ruined abbeys and castles. These heralds of the picturesque movement are acutely historically aware, and to the original viewer elicited that sweet pang of a lost age, close enough for recognition, but remote enough for the weaving of mystic romance, of chivalry and virtuous faith, crumbling into and becoming earth.
The paintings in this exhibition are free versions of some of these prints. The early ones tend to be more accurate and are identified as actual places in the inscription. They are also framed within and imply that bits of paper come to life. But as my work progressed, I began to ‘own’ the image more, and the inscription was replaced by a line each from Milton’s Paradise Lost.
This brings me to the title. Kingdom is, of course, a truncated reference to the United Kingdom, the home of the original scenes. But as the paintings gradually escaped their source material, they were perhaps edging towards another kingdom, a realm elsewhere, where the ruins of our daily efforts are reconstituted in vivacious simplicity.’
The Private View of Kingdom will take place on Friday 13 January between 5.30-7.00pm in the Wirth Gallery of The Merritt Centre. Admission is free and all are welcome to join us.
