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Nadia Hebson’s
Goria is a micro version of Phantasmagoria, which premiered at Chapter,
Cardiff in February 2003. This new work reflects Hebson’s preoccupation
with the ambivalence of emotion; exploring overbearing, amorphous
sentiments it creates an uneasy melancholic, narrative. Goria’s
sentient landscape; half remembered, half seen; examines how emotion
when cut loose from the personal, takes on its own life.
Goria contains a diorama of grottos, trees and painted self-portraits,
which together form an installation struck uncompromisingly between
sculpture and painting. This tableaux vivant extends the emotional
territory of Hebson’s paintings by creating a mental as well
as physical space and thereby binding the viewer to her world by
intensifying their relationship with the work.
This whole 'phantasmagoria' is in fact constructed as if it were
a painting and Hebson wants it to function as such. In Goria it
is possible to find worlds within worlds, paintings within paintings.
It is listless, retina burning, slow-dreaming and inescapable, emulating
a strange delirium where the last thing seen unnerves and consoles
simultaneously.
Goria is a tantalising, multi layered installation with myriad references;
from the paintings of Rogier Van Der Weyden, Grunwald and Hans Memling,
to Victorian wardian cases and magic lantern shows, to the sunken
forests of Ivan's childhood and Akira Kurosawa's exhaustive Dreams.
An accompanying pamphlet entitled Phantasmagoria with text by Annabel
Dover will be available at the opening.
Nadia Hebson completed her post graduate diploma at the Royal Academy
Schools in 2000. She has exhibited widely including in Peter Blake’s
room at the Royal Academy Summer Show (2000) and in the Emerging
Artists Award Exhibition at BOC Headquarters selected by Matthew
Collings (2002). Awards have included the British Institute Drawing
Prize, and the Andre De Segonzac travel award.
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