Henny Acloque's paintings draw on old masters such as Bosch, Bruegel, Durer and Ibbetsen.
Appropriating the work of dead artists, Acloque forensically unpicks and reassembles the layers of each image she works from. She speaks of her paintings being "evidence of evidence of evidence". Acrylic bound by resin, Acloque’s glossy (usually oval) paintings speak of infinity, inferring that both the landscape and our ideologies expand and contract outside of the image (and the edges of a canvas).
Recent paintings draw on her family's collections of auction catalogues and postcards featuring landscape paintings, enabling Acloque's investigation into our relationship to nature, the transfer of knowledge (public, private, between artists), and the consumption of art and objects.
Dwellings or ruins feature repeatedly, representing lost ideologies and shifting power bases. Eliminating all figurative elements from the originals, Acloque enforces her own codes and systems to re-introduce 'characters' to the frozen worlds she paints. Utilising the colour of a cloth from a figure in the reproduction image, Acloque injects abstract swoops and strokes that wittily and darkly undermine and disrupt these fantastical visions.
This notion of 'owning' the painting is literally played out, with colours becoming fatter and more garish, suffocating and squeezing the image underneath.
In this new series of works, Acloque subtly prises open collections (and collectors) to reflect on how our changing world finds new meaning in their legacy and how changes in society, culture, and the economy have radically reshaped the meaning of objects and our relationships with them.
Henny Acloque was born in 1979 and lives and works in London. Recent solo exhibitions include 'Lugar de Culto', Ceri Hand Gallery, Liverpool, 2012, 'Circumstances', First Floor Projects, London, 2010 and 'A Dressing', Ceri Hand Gallery, Liverpool, 2009. Group exhibitions include 'The Threadneedle Art Prize', Mall Galleries, London, 2011, 'THE FUTURE CAN WAIT presents: Polemically Small', Torrance Art Museum, LA, USA, 2011, 'Fade Away', Transition Gallery, London, 2010 and 'The Future Can Wait', The Truman Brewery, London, 2009. Henny won the Exeter Open, 2010 and was nominated for the Jerwood Drawing Prize, 2009. She has an upcoming solo exhibition at The China Shop, Oxford in September 2012.
