Dates: From 21 June 2024
Place: Level 5
Access: There is step-free access via a lift
Colours is an installation by Margaux Carpentier created especially for this summer at Peckham Levels and revolving around four main artworks: Fish, Egg, Magma and Cloud.
Margaux Carpentier is an artist born in France and based in London. Her work ranges from illustrations to mural & fine art painting, printmaking and ceramics. She is interested in representing the human figure to tell stories and express feelings.
From the artist:
Starting from the title “colours”, an aspect of our world dear to me and my work, I first wanted to channel a feeling of joy and lightness to celebrate the summer in a small act of rebellion against a creeping darkness in which the world we know seems to plunge headfirst.
Colours can uplift us and change our mood – think about waking up to a perfect blue sky or spotting that impossibly bright yellow flower, lost amidst a shabby patch of grass. However, colours are not the whole inspiration behind this series of drawings, but merely the spark which got me started.
To tell stories through my work I use unapologetic human figures and a combination of symbols plucked from the air. Here is a little bit about the inspiration which helped me to create the scenes presented here. Please treat this as my interpretation, which is by no means exhaustive. Feel free to imagine new meanings that suit your story and sensibility, to create your own tales.
The fish has sneaked into my drawings for a few years now. Born from a distant memory of fish-shaped French Easter chocolate or the feeling of gutting a mackerel at age 9, it is to me a multifaceted symbol. Its slimy and scaly body can represent the ultimate strangeness of emotions which pierce us and come swimming inside us from time to time.
The egg was encountered on a stormy autumn evening, when I sat on a brick wall bordering an old cemetery only to discover a row of perfectly aligned eggs someone had placed on top of the bricks. This mystery brought the egg to my work, perhaps a symbol of treasure, enigma but also something fragile we must care for. The egg here is spotted and giant; maybe some fantastical creature is about to hatch.
My Flowers have human faces, hidden in their core. The hybrid being is held here, or even pulled out, acting as a mirror, a fragrant interlocutor to some inner discussion. These strange flowers can illustrate the myriads of voices and people who live inside us.
The cloud is new to me and formed by being part of the audience at a talk between two writers (Shon Faye & Maggie Nelson), in which they described the exchange that was happening as “holding a cloud together”.
The cloud here is held by two people with a dose of struggle and is dissolving into rain. It is something evanescent, bringing precious water to the earth but also conversely acting as an odd symbol of gloom in western iconography.
The red artwork is inspired by the myth of Sisyphus, who, condemned to push a huge boulder uphill sees it roll back to the bottom and is forced to start again for eternity.
It is an allegory of our human lives in which we struggle to acquire knowledge and become the best version of ourselves only to die in the end and take it all with us. Or else, this is one way to see it. The characters here are not pushing the giant round stone which looks like a ball of magma but resting on it in an act of relaxation, love and care. They are not going anywhere, living in stillness and embracing the heart of the earth.
The framed works are limited edition screen-prints, printed by the artist at Print Club London in Dalston.
