Ana Maria Pacheco: Prints

UNKNOWN LAND
Ana Maria Pacheco: Prints
Space4 Gallery
March 22nd to April 20th
www.anamariapacheco.co.uk

Ana was born in the centre of Brazil, and at 65 years of age she is still as active and prolific as ever before. Primarily a sculptress she got involved with printmaking whilst studying at the Slade School of Art. She was recently the Associate Artist at the National Gallery (1997 - 2000) - the first non-European and sculptor to hold the appointment. Since 1973 Ana has lived and worked in England.

The exhibition at Space4 concentrates on her printed work and displays four of Pacheco's printing techniques (etching, multi-plate colour etching, woodcut and drypoint) by bringing together five sets of her prints:
Rehearsal 1-10 (etching, 1989),
Gargantua and Pantagruel I-X (woodcut, 1994),
Terra Ignota 1-10 (drypoint, 1994),
Lux Aeterna I & II (drypoint, 1995)
Tales of Transformation I-V (multi-plate colour etching, 1998).

In each series Pacheco has concentrated on a specific historic fable or social tradition to produce dramatic, highly charged images that illustrate the fine line between human comedy and tragedy.

It is clear as you look at the first selection of prints, “Rehearsal 1-10”, that Ana is interested in the world of theatre and story telling. In the first room there are two sets of prints on either side of you, each a series of five images. These prints are of heads, closely and tightly cropped, dark and black, with small touches of a striking mute red. The faces have life and character, and they are doing something, or have a hold of something, though you cannot be sure what.

In the next room are a selection of woodcuts from the “Gargantua and Pantagruel I-X” series. These are based on the stories of Rabelais and feature flying pigs, giants, men urinating and other scenes loosely associated with his medieval naratives. They are simplistic images with a lightness of touch.

“Tales of Transformation I-V” are produced through multi-plate colour etching and relate to scenes from Ovid's 'Metamorphoses'. With prints of Orpheus singing to Persephone, Circe and the men she transformed to pigs they display a further example of Ana's love for storytelling. Talking about the use of myths in her work she says, “it's not that I'm interested in myths in a direct way. If you investigate them they reflect patterns of behaviour that actually haven't changed that much.................we always hope we can change although this doesn't happen that often.” These prints have an almost illustrative quality as though from a childs fairytale book. The colours are bold and the overall effect is captivating.

Moving into the cental part of the gallery we see “Terra Ignota 1-10”. Ten prints made using the dry-point technique. These show a series of images with ships in dry-dock. Her theme of journey's, travel & transformation taking a twist, the people here are in a vessel that is going nowhere. These show groups of people in boats raised from the ground with stilts (one bizarrely supported by a Rhinoceros). These images are inspired by the work of D.H.Lawrence, from his poem 'The Ship of Death'. The title translates as 'unknown land' and continues her exploaration of ideas to do with the underworld, the lands after life, and the body as a vessel for the soul and the transformation of body and spirit. I enjoyed these images very much, they strike an unsettling resonance, desperate hope with abject futility.
Also in this room are two prints from her Lux Aeterna I & IV series. The title comes from a Requiem Mass and translates as 'eternal light'. When looking through some magazines Ana saw a photograph of a conflict in the Middle East which showed a crowd of civilians huddling under the dominance of a helicopter, on seeing this she was instantly reminded of another photograph she had seen, one taken in 19th Century Brazil. The similarity of these two scenarios was, she felt, something worth investigating in her prints. The prints show fearful faces cowering, one from a helicopter and in the other there is a female Griffin and what appears to be a burning ship. The faces could be of any race, they are human, but it is hard to make out any other distinction. Asked if there is a political message behind Lux Aeterna she says “ I think it would be naïve to think you can make any work that doesn't have a social connotation – I am not talking about politics or politicians, I am talking about a human condition: humankind as political beings. You live in a society and your interaction with others is a political statement. So in that sense my work has political implications because it is a part of what we are as humans.” To me these prints show the connection that these myths, stories and poems have to real life, the eternal inspiration behind the recurring stories of humankind. On the subject of this connection Ana says “I am fascinated by the manic reality of everyday life and also between the divide between drama and melodrama. What do I mean? Something, I think, about the mis-match of realities of expectations in everyday life. Obviously this has a lot to do with the values of my own culture; nevertheless, the cultural references come to me in a very fragmented way.”
Ana Maria Pacheco is an artist of extraordinary diversity. Her work draws on a wide variety of cultural references that include Brazilian folklore, classical myth, mystical Catholicism and medieval satire. Pacheco uses her source material to create works that play with the art of storytelling. She has developed a particular use of symbols, motifs and devices that combine to produce a distinctive and fantastic imagery.
Seeing work like this gets to the very root of art. Images that inspire, lead you into them, tell stories and take you on journey's. With themes that are present in the first stories & poems of man, settings that relate to today's situations and set somewhere on the psychic borderland.
A very good show, I only wish there were more! I am glad that I have had the chance to be introduced to Ana's work. She has a wonderful style, confident and natural with very much her own idiosyncratic vocabulary. I will certainly look out for more of her artwork, hopefully next time I will be able to see some of her sculptures.

By Luke Payn

First published in Art & Soul Magazine in May 2008