Purdy Hicks Gallery
General Sector
Booth C11
25 Thurloe Street
London SW7 2LQ
United Kingdom
Presentation of the gallery
ABSTRACTION IN FIGURATION.
Figurative art and abstract art are often seen as opposites, but total abstraction is impossible, as it oscillates between the identifiable and the indefinable. There is always a trace or hint of figurative in the abstract, but in the same way, figuration invariably has elements of abstraction. These elements are sometimes provided by nature itself, as in the work of Alice Maher (Artist in focus).
Presentation of the gallery
Alice Maher (b. 1956, Co. Tipperary, Ireland) has produced some of the most iconic images in contemporary Irish art: sculpture, photography, film drawings, installation, video, charcoal drawings, watercolours and prints. She is known for her series of sculptures using natural materials, drawings, installations, and photographic self-portraits using her own body and elements taken from nature. His work is rooted in cultural history, mythology, folklore, fairy tales, and medieval history.
In Maher's work, the internal and external worlds interface, coexist, and self-generate. She asserts that her work is "not declamatory", but rather motivated by the desire "to extend figuration to other areas" and to offer a haptic and visual poetics of form.
Alice Maher's works are held in many public collections, including the British Museum, London, Hugh Lane, London and London: British Museum, London; Hugh Lane Municipal Gallery, Dublin; Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin; Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, Massachusetts and Hammer Museum, Los Angeles. The retrospective exhibition Becoming was held at the Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin.
