SAFFRON NEWEY
Promethean Heat
20 December 2021 – 31 January 2022
Painting has long been an arbiter of historical narrative. Through appropriation, Saffron Newey cuts, copies and pastes historical masterpieces into new, hybrid paintings. From the works emerge new stories and identities, sourced from the sublime network of the Internet.
A form of time travel, Newey brings the past to the present and creates images that catechise historical chronology.
Promethean Heat converges various unconnected narratives:
The title of the work alludes to the mythological figure of Prometheus who knew all that had passed and all that was to come. Likewise, in this painting, a singularity of time is imagined.
Among the conflated stories in this painting is an appropriation of the Dutch Baroque masterpiece by Jan Weenix, The Dead Swan, 1716, selected clouds painted by Romantic masters Bierstadt and Gude, samples of Caravaggian drapery and common commercial stock imagery of seascapes. Around the room are glimpses of Frans Snyders and Jan Asselijn (Baroque masters of birdlife and bounty hunting).
Promethean Heat can be viewed through the MARS window from the 20th of December 2021 until the 27th of January 2022.
