Richard Of York Gave Battle In Vain

5 April - 21 June 2014

Laure Prouvost, Stong Sory (Vegetables). Courtesy of Laure Prouvost and LUX, London

Laure Prouvost, Stong Sory (Vegetables). Courtesy of Laure Prouvost and LUX, London

Beyond its literal meaning about the unsuccessful pretender to the throne, this exhibition’s title is a mnemonic. Each word represents another, prompting us to recall the colours of the visible spectrum in sequence. Richard = red, Battle = blue. The words are stand-ins for other images. Mnemonics are used to aid recall, but rather than simplifying they add another layer of complexity to a phrase’s meaning.
The artists in Richard Of York Gave Battle In Vain tread similar ground. Turner Prize winner Laure Prouvost overlays spoken fantastical narratives onto commonplace objects, the pace, whimsy and charm of which often contradict the images she presents. Drawing equally from the world of symbolism and metaphor, Catrin Davies & Lewis Wright refer to the Classical painting tradition of the still life in which objects stand in for a bigger narrative. The painted surface becomes a code for the viewer to crack. Catrin & Lewis appropriate this tradition by assembling still life sculptures and flooding them with pigment. Jorge Lizalde’s work looks at the way we remember and how we recall events. In his Mnemonic series, short filmic poems are created from online resources in response to participants’ early memories.

Exhibition Walk and Talk
Saturday 3 May 1pm
Join curator Anthony Shapland for a curatorial tour and discussion of the exhibition. Free, all welcome.

The following Artists were in this show:
Jorge Lizalde
Catrin Davies and Lewis Wright
Laure Prouvost

Programme