The outcome of a year long dialogue between two artists Amelia Critchlow and Evy Jokhova, ‘Mimesis' – from Greek mimos imitator or actor, source of mimeis – to imitate, features work that contemplates interior social order as inherited, transitional, neutral, challengeable, idealised and inevitable. Housed in the Westminster Arts Reference Library the exhibition operates within a palpable impasse between an absorbing narrative of books and generations of stored knowledge and the ordered, timeless quality of a public library. The works in this exhibition look to architecture, image and display to create a Gesamtkunstwerk of virtual worlds that reflect the world of the viewer whilst being subtly subverted.
Approaching ‘mimicry’ as a visual metaphor for a greater society, the artists invite the viewers and participants to engage with ideas of social consciousness, placement and perception, through an immersive installation that collages images, paintings and objects, drawing on their similarities and visual etymology. Highlighting historical constants that have remained parallel and unchanged from pre-Antiquity to the modern day Critchlow and Jokhova open up a conversation on the hierarchy of space and (self) image, from domestic to social and public.
‘Mimesis’ explores how image and architectural form influence the way we read our world, how cognition can cloud and clarify, how association can attack an image or experience, or stand apart, apparently neutral and transparent. Image and form are presented here as relational things; they involve an interaction as the viewer is invited into a space of direct associations where familiar objects can be openly questioned.
Installed as a collaborative art work at the Westminster Reference Library, London in 2015, and accompanied by a publication with guest writer Becky Huff-Hunter.
+ interview with Anna McNay for Studio International
+ review in London Visual Arts
+ full press release
