True Form is Adelaide Cioni’s debut exhibition at The Approach, showing new works across both gallery spaces. Inspired by a quote from the Ancient Egyptian Panehsy, Royal Treasurer to Pharaoh Ramesses II, the show talks about our relationship with the artworks that we make or surround ourselves with, connecting it to questions of translation
In the main gallery, Cioni has produced several large unstretched cotton fabric paintings of female forms. These are enlargements of drawings that she made of statuettes from museums, including the British Museum in London and the Egyptian Museum in Turin. Though distinctly female, the forms are ambiguous – broken bodies, disproportionate or with missing parts – reduced to their reproductive system. Through a process of multiple translations, drawings of drawings, Cioni has condensed these images to their simplest denomination, where we see crude black outlines of figures filled with blocks of white. Whilst the simplicity of these paintings means that they are very flat, their scale and association to historical sculpture gives the work a sense of monumentality.
Where in the main gallery space, Cioni shows us only figurative painting and one text-based piece, The Annexe space comprises exclusively abstract work. Textile is installed floor to ceiling, whilst abstract forms are depicted in primary colours, in explicit contrast with the monochromatic paintings next door.
True Form coincides with London Gallery Weekend (31 May – 2 June) where Cioni will be presenting a newly commissioned performance work as part of the LGW Performance Programme in collaboration with UP Projects. There will be two performances presented at 2pm and 5pm on Friday 31 May in the garden at St James’s Church Piccadilly. The performances will be followed by a short conversation with the artist.
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