Exeter Phoenix Gallery

Exeter Phoenix Gallery 12 Jun–19 Jul

Exeter Phoenix Gallery is pleased to present the first solo exhibition by Lara Viana which is accompanied by a new essay written specifically for this exhibition by critic and writer Rebecca Geldard. (Extracts below)

"Viana was born in Salvador, Brazil but has spent the past 25 years living in the UK. While... one wouldn’t necessarily guess this from the images she creates, certain recurring themes and motifs lead one on migratory trails across cultures and through art history. There may be a presiding sense of old world architectural and painterly romance about Viana’s compositions, but her carefully controlled palette and smeary scenographic direction pitch one between places and states: heat and cold, light and dark, figuration and abstraction, making and thinking and the different narrative perspectives of subject, witness and voyeur; then and now

…one does not need autobiographical specifics to experience the sense of dislocation she creates. Of course one wonders how much of her personal story Viana has written into these scenes, but it’s her means of fusing appropriated imagery, techniques and data pulled from memory that keeps one shuffling back and forth between the many layers of these ghostly simulacra.

The past, or the idea of remembered time, becomes substance in Viana’s hand – the evocative whiff of yesteryear a tool for engaging the viewer with and distancing one from the painted subject".

Viana studied at both Falmouth School of Art & the Royal College of Art and is base in London where she is represented by DOMOBAAL gallery. She will also be exhibiting in East End Academy: The Painting Edition at the Whitechapel Gallery, London from
9 Jul–20 Sep 2009.