In a collaboration with Charleston Trust, Belmacz will host the first public display of Duncan Grant’s erotic drawings in London. Working from the drawings sensual subject matter, their inter- and extra- sexual themes, Jakob Lena Knebl and Ashley Hans Scheirl have been selected to contextualise these ‘lost’ works through their particular sensibility.
Drawn during the 1940s and 50s, when sex between men was still illegal in England (and any notion of sexual deviance was frowned upon), these drawings were feared to have been destroyed. In an act of intermate reciprocity, the private drawings were saved, passing in secret between lovers, before being donated to Grant’s former home Charleston in 2020.
“Private” Parts!? is Jakob Lena Knebl and Ashley Hans Scheirl’s exhibitionary response to Grant’s passionate depictions will be a continuation of their collaborative practice. Through the production of a fantastic mise-en-scène, their contextualisation will explore notions of identity and desire. Known for their liveliness, their use of absurdity and satire, this new body of work will echo Grant’s liberatory aspirations, realising these through spatial juxtaposition.
The first presentation of the duo’s practice in the UK, “Private” Parts!? will open on Friday 16 September 2022 – following Jakob Lena Knebl and Ashley Hans Scheirl’s representation of Austria at the 59th Venice Biennale and ahead of the duo’s solo exhibition at Palais de Tokyo in 2023.
This exhibition at Belmacz will coincide with, Very Private? a wider exhibition of Grant’s erotic drawings at Charleston. Responding to themes of sex, intimacy, gender, and identity, this group exhibition at Grant’s Sussex residence, features new work by artists including Somaya Critchlow, Ajamu X, and Linder Sterling, and echoes those ideas being worked through by Jakob Lena Knebl and Ashley Hans Scheirl.
For more information please contact [email protected]
