‘I wanted to give the show the feel of going down into the forgotten corner of a museum basement, the things that never get put on display, stored forever, ‘says Christiane Shortel about her new exhibition, Primordial Storehouse at City Art Depot.

As an artist whose subjects have consistently been otherworldly, and her attention on lost or extinct imagined civilisations that sustain their capacity to surprise, Shortel appears to intuitively sustains her capacity to reconsider and renew significant aspects of her practice, consistently introducing strange new worlds and working with new materials, ranging from gouache and acrylic to embroidery thread, lycra, cotton and felt, and for Primordial Storehouse, polymer clay. 

Shortel describes the figures in Primordial Storehouse as a ‘gallery of talisman-like heads each with its own curious personality that could bring luck or a curse,’ and in spite of the assured realisation of each figure, she enigmatically notes that they were made ‘quickly and intuitively while watching a film, and are influenced by that media in some way.’

DETAILS

Christiane Shortal, Primordial Storehouse

City Art Depot, 96 Disraeli St, Sydenham,  23 May – 12 June

IMAGE

1.       Christiane Shortal, untitled, 2023, polymer clay