30/07/16
Niki de Saint Phalle: Je Suis Une Vache Suisse
Omer Tiroche
Contemporary Art
17 June – 10 September 2016
At first sight, Omer Tiroche
Contemporary Art is filled with a menagerie of joyful, celebratory and colourful
works: gouache paintings and crayon drawings; sculptures and reliefs studded
with coloured glass mosaic; ornate mirrors and intricate yet simple jewellery –
all infused with a sense of playfulness and naivety, like that of a child. But
look more closely and there is more to the works on display than meets the eye:
a gorilla with a gaping hole where his internal organs – including his heart –
should be; serpents; skulls; and a satisfied lion, recently having feasted on a
man, whose shirt and shoes lay abandoned by the miniature settee. Catherine Marie-Agnès Fal de Saint Phalle, or Niki de Saint
Phalle (1930-2002) as she became known, had a traumatic early life, which later
unavoidably fed into her artwork, making it more worldy-wise and complex than
it might at first seem.
Read this review here