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2021
a sample of paintings from 2021
The thickness of a new skin (plus supporting work), 2021,
Natural fire red oxide pigment on birch ply (40cm diameter) and wool blanket. Dims variable, overall approx 200cm x 150cm x 10cm.
This work consists of an etching on birch ply (40cm diameter), which balances on a draped wool blanket pinned to the wall. Natural fire red iron oxide pigment is rubbed into the etched lines and wood grain, and into the existing stains and creases of the old blanket. The work packs up into a small box for transportation and is hung with two panel pins.
Natural fire red oxide pigment on birch ply (40cm diameter) and wool blanket. Dims variable, overall approx 200cm x 150cm x 10cm.
This work consists of an etching on birch ply (40cm diameter), which balances on a draped wool blanket pinned to the wall. Natural fire red iron oxide pigment is rubbed into the etched lines and wood grain, and into the existing stains and creases of the old blanket. The work packs up into a small box for transportation and is hung with two panel pins.
Recordings 1 - 5, 2021,
mixed media drawing on vintage artist board, 25 x 31.5 cm
mixed media drawing on vintage artist board, 25 x 31.5 cm
2020
THE ViSITATION
Multimedia installation, dimensions variable, comprising the below works:
Mixed media installation comprising a drawing and painting in oil paint and oil bar onto printed velvet (145 x 200cm), plus two collages (16 x 24 cm each). Layered images are derived from Pontormo's de-saturated paintings of the Visitazione, a photograph of The Marble Curtain (Cheddar Gorge), and an hysteroscopic photograph of a womb. Overall dimensions variable.
2019
THE THICKNESS OF A NEW SKIN
Multimedia installation, dimensions variable, comprising the below works:
Standing stones, 2019, sculptural intervention upon an existing public art work, on the site of the old tourist information office, Margate (cloth, sugar solution, vinyl photograph)
The Thickness of a New Skin, 2019, video loop, 3 mins
The Thickness of a New Skin, 2019, video stills
The thickness of a new skin, sculptural installation (cloth, sugar solution, casts of standing stones, vinyl photograph) and collaboration with Helder Clara for #plusone at Limbo, Margate (Helder's work is the aluminium foil on floor and aluminium foil sphere)
2019 cont.
Santa Teresa, 2019, mixed media painting and sculpture (jesmonite, graphite, gesso, pigment, copper, velvet, emulsion)
Nymph, 2019, mixed media painting and sculpture (jesmonite, gesso, pigment, satin, copper, mirror)
Le Triomphe de Pan, 2019, mixed media diptych painting
The Mouse Druid, 2019, mixed media painting and sculpture (jesmonite, rubber, emulsion, green scene scatter grass, bed sheet)
Monument to the small, 2019, mixed media painting and sculpture (plinth, marble, lard, stone henge model, postcards, pigment, emulsion, green scene scatter grass, green velvet, mouse intervention)
Curtain, 2019, mixed media sculpture (shower curtains, photographs, postcards)
O mia bambina cara, 2019, performance, 5 mins
2018
A rose is a rose is a rose
Multimedia installation, dimensions variable, comprising the below works:
Odalisque (Projection), dimensions and duration variable, animated gif, Limited edition of 5
The Repose (central sculpture), dimensions variable, soap, lard, marble, jesmonite, copper, fibreglass, velvet, felt, satin, carpet, shower curtains, essential oils, aroma, steam.
The Dance of Venus #1 – #3, (Mirrors x 3), 37cm diameter each, scratched drawing on emulsion and charcoal pigment on mirror, installed alongside marble, lard and soap.
The Bathers #1 – #9 (Paintings x 9) 40cm diameter each, charcoal powder, pigment, acrylic, on canvas, on board, velvet.
The Turkish Bath (installation), dimensions variable (circa 12 metre circumference / 380cm diameter), soap, lard, marble, jesmonite, copper, fibreglass, velvet, felt, satin, carpet, shower curtains, essential oils, aroma, steam.
Chiara Williams was invited, by Liddicoat & Goldhill curator Lucy Howarth, to develop a new site-responsive work for the Project Space, housed under the architectural studio, at the Printworks Margate. Project page: http://www.chiarawilliams.com/a-rose-is-a-rose-is-a-rose.html
When Gertrude Stein wrote “a rose is a rose is a rose...” she was referencing Shakespeare of course, and meant, perhaps, that the name of a thing automatically evokes imagery and emotions; Chiara takes this playful sentence as a genesis for her own contemplation of meaning, identity and beauty.
By spending a prolonged period of time confined to the room, during her week-long residency, Chiara considered the geometry of the Project Space, an odd trapezoid, and the circular printing press wheel (recalling the printing press and the building’s history) as a natural dovetail to her current research – which involves a formal obsession with circular surfaces, supports, framing devices and circuits, and is conceptually concerned with romanticism-versus-pragmatism in literature, cinema, architecture and design. Through these mechanisms and lenses Chiara contemplates the homogenisation of female beauty and the commodification of the female body. She is particularly concerned with the social and cultural constructions of aesthetics and value. Engaging overt-yet-fluid signifiers, ‘A rose is a rose is a rose…’ explores, with ambivalence, the problematics of goddess myths, in the wake of recent phenomena such as #MeToo and the rapidly evolving discourse of gender identity.
The installation employs paintings, sculptures, projections, textiles and visceral ephemera – steam, aroma, lard – alongside weighty materials – jesmonite, marble, copper – to create an immersive interior. It is the intention to re-configure the entire gallery-space, transforming it into something that shifts between a hamam, a temple, and an ode to the bodies that dwell in such places, profane and sacred.
When Gertrude Stein wrote “a rose is a rose is a rose...” she was referencing Shakespeare of course, and meant, perhaps, that the name of a thing automatically evokes imagery and emotions; Chiara takes this playful sentence as a genesis for her own contemplation of meaning, identity and beauty.
By spending a prolonged period of time confined to the room, during her week-long residency, Chiara considered the geometry of the Project Space, an odd trapezoid, and the circular printing press wheel (recalling the printing press and the building’s history) as a natural dovetail to her current research – which involves a formal obsession with circular surfaces, supports, framing devices and circuits, and is conceptually concerned with romanticism-versus-pragmatism in literature, cinema, architecture and design. Through these mechanisms and lenses Chiara contemplates the homogenisation of female beauty and the commodification of the female body. She is particularly concerned with the social and cultural constructions of aesthetics and value. Engaging overt-yet-fluid signifiers, ‘A rose is a rose is a rose…’ explores, with ambivalence, the problematics of goddess myths, in the wake of recent phenomena such as #MeToo and the rapidly evolving discourse of gender identity.
The installation employs paintings, sculptures, projections, textiles and visceral ephemera – steam, aroma, lard – alongside weighty materials – jesmonite, marble, copper – to create an immersive interior. It is the intention to re-configure the entire gallery-space, transforming it into something that shifts between a hamam, a temple, and an ode to the bodies that dwell in such places, profane and sacred.
2018 cont.
HUSH
Multimedia installation, dimensions variable, comprising the works pictured below:
Hush, 2018
installation with carpet, wallpaper, mattress, mirrors, mug, book and paintings.
(paintings: Hush #1 - #10 acrylic and violet pigment on canvas board, 40cm diameter)
Room 304, The Nayland Rock Hotel, At the Violet Hour, Margate, 2018
“She turns and looks a moment in the glass
Hardly aware of her departed lover”
‘The Lost Madonna’, a novel of suspense, had been left in room 304 by a former guest, alongside a broken, round, ceramic bathroom mirror and a stained, golden mattress, slumped against a dusty-pink carpet and peeling woodchip…these artefacts, touched by a fading sunset on Williams’s first visit to the room, seemed to neatly dovetail with the uneasy atmosphere of the sexual encounter that takes place ‘at the violet hour’, between the typist and the clerk, as witnessed by Tiresias in The Waste Land’s ‘Fire Sermon’.
The materiality of the room’s textures, shapes and fleshy colours, together with existing preoccupations in Williams’s artistic output, led her to create a series of vignette paintings derived from film scenes in which female characters are reflected in a mirror or are otherwise constrained by cinematic framing, often in hotel settings. The resulting installation, ‘Hush’, hints at the relationship between a hotel room and the body it encloses, pacing around its perimeters, creating quiet dialogues between tactile surfaces and even, banging one’s head against the wall…
“When lovely woman stoops to folly and
Paces about her room again, alone,
She smoothes her hair with automatic hand,
And puts a record on the gramophone”
installation with carpet, wallpaper, mattress, mirrors, mug, book and paintings.
(paintings: Hush #1 - #10 acrylic and violet pigment on canvas board, 40cm diameter)
Room 304, The Nayland Rock Hotel, At the Violet Hour, Margate, 2018
“She turns and looks a moment in the glass
Hardly aware of her departed lover”
‘The Lost Madonna’, a novel of suspense, had been left in room 304 by a former guest, alongside a broken, round, ceramic bathroom mirror and a stained, golden mattress, slumped against a dusty-pink carpet and peeling woodchip…these artefacts, touched by a fading sunset on Williams’s first visit to the room, seemed to neatly dovetail with the uneasy atmosphere of the sexual encounter that takes place ‘at the violet hour’, between the typist and the clerk, as witnessed by Tiresias in The Waste Land’s ‘Fire Sermon’.
The materiality of the room’s textures, shapes and fleshy colours, together with existing preoccupations in Williams’s artistic output, led her to create a series of vignette paintings derived from film scenes in which female characters are reflected in a mirror or are otherwise constrained by cinematic framing, often in hotel settings. The resulting installation, ‘Hush’, hints at the relationship between a hotel room and the body it encloses, pacing around its perimeters, creating quiet dialogues between tactile surfaces and even, banging one’s head against the wall…
“When lovely woman stoops to folly and
Paces about her room again, alone,
She smoothes her hair with automatic hand,
And puts a record on the gramophone”
2017 - 2008
STATEMENTS ABOUT ARCHIVE WORK
"(a) jocular, ornate quality can be found in Chiara Williams work, who is equally as obsessed by objects and materials, found and manufactured, here with an overt set of signifiers at play. She uses copper wire from televisions to form beautifully coloured flowers, with all their association to the feminine and to the Venus and Aphrodite myths which still persist in our post feminist world. Her 'Birth of Venus' lays this bare, with its plump, glistening yolk on ultramarine pigment. The most precious of painters’ pigments, associated with the virgin’s mantle, sits in a compact, the everyday device found in handbags. Nothing is too banal to escape her commentary."
Kate Brindley, KEEPING IT REAL - In Teesside and East London, North South Divine catalogue, 2013
Kate Brindley, KEEPING IT REAL - In Teesside and East London, North South Divine catalogue, 2013
Chiara Williams’s paintings often focus on the commodification of the female body; the female as ornament, the female as clotheshorse, the female as Goddess. Women are depicted with eerily featureless faces, airbrushed or obliterated beyond recognition, gazing either at themselves reflected in a mirror, or at the viewer. More recently, the faces and bodies are completely occluded, and our attention is diverted to the draped contours, folds and the highly saturated colours of the garments they are wearing.
With influences as far ranging as Giotto, Poussin and Vogue magazine, Williams is drawn to imagery which exhibits strong formal qualities of colour, line and composition. She is consciously seduced by the aspirational, fantastical and stylised language of pictorial aesthetics transmitted through cultural media, whether the medium is a contemporary lifestyle magazine or a 14th Century fresco.
Williams recognises herself as a colluder operating within cultural conventions. It is the palpable discomfort she feels, about the oscillation between projections of value, empowerment and oppression in the images she sources, which is so at odds with Williams’s conscious feminist outlook, and which draws her to paint these figures again and again.
With influences as far ranging as Giotto, Poussin and Vogue magazine, Williams is drawn to imagery which exhibits strong formal qualities of colour, line and composition. She is consciously seduced by the aspirational, fantastical and stylised language of pictorial aesthetics transmitted through cultural media, whether the medium is a contemporary lifestyle magazine or a 14th Century fresco.
Williams recognises herself as a colluder operating within cultural conventions. It is the palpable discomfort she feels, about the oscillation between projections of value, empowerment and oppression in the images she sources, which is so at odds with Williams’s conscious feminist outlook, and which draws her to paint these figures again and again.