Mirror Mother

Location

Country: UK
City: London
Place: Government Art Collection

In Mirror Mother we see only the stockinged, sandaled feet and clothed legs of a woman who is sitting across from the bottom half of a babygro on a kilim or carpet. We are not quite sure if there is a baby or if these are just its clothes. Without any faces, props or indication of anyone else in that space, this pared down scene captures our full attention. The stockinged feet and the sandals, their contrast with the very particular pattern of the carpet and the angle the painting is made from create enough visual interest in themselves to draw us into the scene. We find ourselves wondering what the story is behind this moment captured in time. The artist Lorena Levi works with narrative portraiture. She starts with stories she finds on the internet, in chat rooms and podcasts, or with found images and scenes she has been witness to and builds or collages together imagined narratives in paint. As in this work, she composes suggestive situations, rather than constructing resolved scenes. It is the process of imagining narratives that is of interest to her, and her work invites the viewer to make their own imaginative journey. Levi works with wood as her surface, ushering in the colour and texture of this surface to be a material component of the work. In Mirror Mother, the wood that she paints on serves also as the floor within the work that her painted carpet rests upon.

Lorena Levi was born in Istanbul and received an MA in Fine Art at the University of Edinburgh in 2021. In 2022 she won the Jacksons Painting Prize. Solo exhibitions of her work have been held at the MAMA Project and The Sidings in London (2023); and at The Alchemy Experiment, Glasgow (2021). Group exhibitions with her work have been held at galleries and venues including with RSA New Contemporaries, Royal Scottish Academy, The Mound Edinburgh (2023); Bloomberg New Contemporaries, South London Gallery, London and Ferens Art Gallery, Hull (2022); Royal Society of British Artists, London (2022); Knox Gallery, Calgary, Canada; The Holy Art, Athens; Fitzrovia Gallery, London (2021); and the Royal Society of Portrait Painters, Mall Galleries, London (2019).

Places

Subjects

Materials & Techniques

Artist

Lorena Levi (1997 - )

Title

Mirror Mother

Date

2021

Medium

Oil paint on wood

Dimensions

height: 60 cm; width: 70 cm

Provenance

Purchased from New Contemporaries, January 2023

GAC number

19178