Cheiron in Type

Location

Country: UK
City: London
Place: Ministry of Justice, 102 Petty France

Cheiron in Type is a photograph of a damaged copy of Cheiron by the poet RC Trevelyan, published by the Hogarth Press and printed in 1927. The artist Lucy Skaer has cast the book into a block with melted down tintype (a thin sheet of metal used in early photographic printing). Hogarth Press was founded by Virginia Woolf and her husband Leonard, using a set of type with a hand press, to publish their own writing and that of their friends and peers, including RC Trevelyan.
This book is a verse rendition by Trevelyan of the story of Cheiron, who, in Greek mythology, was a centaur (part horse and part human), famous for his wisdom. The legend is that Cheiron was accidentally shot with a poisoned arrow, and that he renounced his immortality to secure the freedom of Prometheus, who had been sentenced to eternal torment for stealing fire from the gods for humankind. Cheiron was then placed among the stars as the constellation Centaurus. Skaer’s curious, poetic, adapted images hover somewhere between recognition and ambiguity, and figuration and abstraction – gaining power from containing something of both the original idea and its negation. 
In her practice, Skaer is interested in ways of addressing the past, with ideas of transformation being key to all her work. This photograph shows the damaged book cast into a block covered with melted down metal tin type. The work is one of 21 prints commissioned in 2012 by the Glasgow Women’s Library to mark the library’s 21st anniversary.

Lucy Skaer was born in 1975, in Cambridge. She studied for a BA with Honours in Fine Art at the Glasgow School of Art from 1993 to 1997. She is a member of Henry VIII’s Wives – a collective of artists founded in 1997 – based variously in Scotland, Norway and Germany, all of whom graduated from the Environmental Arts department at Glasgow School of Art. In 2003, Skaer was shortlisted for the Beck's Futures Prize. In 2008, at London’s Chisenhale Gallery, her installation 'The Siege' displayed images and objects depicting the English landscape, British Empire and Neolithic monuments. In 2009, Skaer was shortlisted for the prestigious Turner Prize for her sculptures 'Black Alphabet' (26 sculptures made of coal dust in the shape of Constantin Brancusi's 'Bird in Space') and 'Leviathan Edge', an installation which included the skull of a sperm whale, drawings and sculptures. Skaer has made a number of 16mm films with the British artist Rosalind Nashashibi including 'Flash in the Metropolitan', made in the Museum of Art in New York in 2006. Skaer’s solo presentations include a mid-career retrospective at the Fruitmarket Gallery in Edinburgh, ‘The Siege’ at the Chisenhale (both 2008) and a major show at Kunsthalle Basel 2009, for which she was nominated for the Turner Prize. Other shows include ‘Scene, Hold, Ballast’ at the Sculpture Center New York, ‘Force Justify’, Kunsthalle Vienna and (with collaborator Rosalind Nashashibi) ‘Spies in the House of Art’ at the Metropolitan Museum, New York (all 2012). Skaer lives and works in New York.

Places

Subjects

Materials & Techniques

paper (as artists material), print (as object name), pigment print, digital print

Artist

Lucy Skaer (1975 - )

Title

Cheiron in Type

Edition

Number 10 in an edition of 20

Date

2012

Medium

digital pigment fine art print on paper

Dimensions

height: 37.6 cm; width: 30.2 cm

Acquisition

Purchased from Glasgow Women's Library, with funds raised from print sales from the Robson Orr TenTen Award, a GAC/Outset Annual Commission, March 2020

Inscription

verso: 'CHERION IN TYPE / 2012 / 10/20', bottom left

Provenance

Glasgow Women's Library, Glasgow, UK; from whom purchased by UK Government Art Collection

GAC number

18883