Reception: RMG Friday, June 1, 7-10PM
Artist Talk: May 26, 1-3PM
The installation Primavera in Sospeso (Spring on Hold) reexamines Botticelli’s Primavera, an iconic image that is often romanticized and commercialized, deconstructing and re-framing the late-Renaissance masterpiece and its ubiquitous postcard format within the artists’ personal perspectives.
Using materials often found in both Jennie Suddick and Anna Rose’s practices (including paper, plastic, wool, and synthetic hair), the two artists explode the familiar image. Connotations of beauty and ease are remixed to highlight the undercurrent of decadence and violence, present both in the allegory of potrayed in Botticelli’s work as well as in the contemporary culture’s constant exploitation and decontextualization of images. An initial sense of familiarity with the subject and the materials is destabilized, woven into an immersive environment to be navigated by the viewer.
While the two artists constructed the elements of this project remotely, beginning the process of unraveling and expanding the subject matter within the specific contexts of their different environments, the work will ultimately be built in conversation with the location over the residency period.
Primavera in Sospeso (Spring on Hold) was exhibited first at Come Up to My Room at the Gladstone Hotel, where it won the Design Offsite Festival Juror’s Choice Award (granted by Andrew Sardone, Editorial Director, Globe Style at The Globe and Mail).
Artist Bios
Anna Rose has lived and worked in Florence, Italy since 2004. She received her MFA from San Francisco Art Institute in 2014. Her work spans photography, video, costume and installation with a sensibility towards the relationship between body and environment, entering into conversation with historical, psychological, and cultural mythologies of place.
Jennie Suddick is a multi-disciplinary artist based in Toronto. She has exhibited in Canada, U.S.A., Europe and Asia. She earned her MFA from York University and holds both a BFA and Advanced Visual Studies Certificate from OCAD University. Her work deals with identity, place and meditated relationships to nature.