Brutes

‘Brutes’ is an exhibition of how the beauty and menace of nature influence the deepest workings of the imagination, explored through the work of two contemporary artists: Malene Hartmann Rasmussen and James Mortimer.

James Mortimer is a British artist based in Oxford. His paintings present a paradisical land of bright skies and meandering rivers where man and beast exist on an equal footing. It is a world both beautiful and beguiling, a place of raw impulses and animal urges. His characters enjoy a semi-sentient state, enjoying country pursuits like rowing and horse riding with a blithe unquestioning innocence. But beneath the seeming idealism, danger lurks at every turn, be it from live volcanos, vicious animals, or even more savage neighbours. Every visual element is pregnant with symbolic meaning: a man with a knife appears repeatedly with a horse, both potent symbols of virility, sex and violence. Palm trees and cacti are pert and sprouting. His buildings are intricately detailed and yet somehow naive, more archetype than abode. The natural world here becomes the setting for cryptic inner narratives of which at times his characters seem unsure. As if the spell of beauty had broken, their paradise seems replete with fears they recognise but somehow cannot comprehend.

Malene Hartmann Rasmussen is a Danish artist who lives and works in London and south west France. Her ceramic sculptures and installations draw on myth, fairytale and folklore, presenting monsters, trolls and the mystical beings that lurk in the heart of the forest. But while her themes may be earthy Malene’s execution is pristine and highly finished, like colourful shiny totems made to appeal at a fundamental level. Faces emerge from forest flora, crawling with creatures of the undergrowth. A fantastical monster appears like a devotional statue, an animal sleeping in its mouth behind a row of protective teeth. A nest of vipers weave together in an unsettlingly regular order; a wall of masks presents wild eyed demons like characters from an ancient rite. This is the raw animism of nature as it comes alive in the deepest recesses of the human imagination, and yet there is a mischievous playfulness that makes these characters palatable, almost loveable. In her work Malene probes how the deep allure of the beautiful can make the unsettling almost hypnotically attractive.