Denise de Cordova
Doña stones and other stories

30 June - 29 July 2011

Denise de Cordova's third solo exhibition with the Eagle Gallery weaves strands of folklore, ethnography and regionalism to present strange tales of the female psyche.
The show brings together recent sculpture, large-scale ceramics and a series of embroidered drawings.

The stones of the artist's title refer to finds in the Asturias region of Spain and other parts of the world that are possibly natural, or could be the remains of stone-age tools or ancient gatherings - the 'elf bolts' of Wuthering Heights. They represent the reoccurrences across different cultures of shared customs and rites of passage, expressed
in costuming, mask and ritualised object.

Meaning and function are ambiguous and De Cordova's work plays with notions of surface embellishment being at odds with what lies beneath. Intricate details of ethnic dress are rendered in stitches, repeated in the painted surfaces of sculpture or in the traditional patterns of Chinese Blue ceramic glaze. Her women are represented in different ways and by different things: as decorative archetype, vessel, pot or basket.
Weighted down and yet made powerful by their burdens - De Cordova describes the Doña stones as the rocks that Eve might have thrown at God to express her rage at the punishment of having her sons set against each other.

Denise de Cordova trained at the Royal College of Art and was a British School at Rome Scholar in 1983 and a Henry Moore Foundation Fellow at Camberwell in 1984.
She has exhibited internationally since the late 1980s and her UK solo shows include Cell Fire at Flowers Central in 2003 and Re-Reader at the Eagle Gallery in 2007.
Her work is held in many private collections through-out Europe and she has undertaken public commissions for Norwich Crown Court (Eastern Arts Sculpture Commission) and Battersea Park (Public Arts Development Trust and Wandsworth Council), amongst others.

For further details or photographs, please contact the Eagle Gallery on 020 7833 2674
or email emmahilleagle@aol.com

Gallery opening hours Wed - Fri 11 - 6, Sat 11 - 4
and by appointment