Anne Desmet
Babel Flower Sundown (detail)
2005
Anne Desmet's new collages and wood engravings display her compelling architectural visions, technical skill and inventiveness to the full.
Her British Museum series is based on the Great Court, designed by Norman Foster. This inspirational urban space combines the experiences of being inside a structure while simultaneously being outside it, a paradox that is convincingly pictured in the collage, British Museum(verticals).
Anne Desmet created this arresting image by cutting up proofs of her wood engravings of the subject and re-assembling the pieces with every other strip of paper reversed and transposed from left to right, alluding to the stimulating visual sensations of Op Art.
City Fragments features a linocut that has been cut up and collaged onto four pieces of slate, retrieved from East London building site skips, where the print follows the fractured edges of the support. This work depicts urban construction and renewal, including an 'improved' version of Foster's Gherkin Building, but is presented in a form that evokes the shattered remains of a lost culture. The fragile razor shells of Urban Evolution in turn allude to the seas that once covered the site of London in the distant geological past.
The most remarkable new works in this exhibition are the five Babel Flowers collages, completed in October 2005. These constitute a conclusive transformation of the Tower of Babel theme that has appeared in many of her new images since 1990. The enlarged scale of these works means that they can be appreciated from a distance, particuarly when viewed as a series, while Desmet's subtle use of materials and precision of touch also repay close attention.
As viewers, we may feel that the artist has now positioned us inside the potentially destructive tower/volcano form, first pictured in Babel/Vesuvius (2003), or perhaps we are looking down into a crater from a bird's eye view, or we may see allusions here to the dark concentric circles of human aspiration and destruction in the building of urban structures, Anne Desmet also introduces striking new elements into the form and imagery of these collages.
The flower motif is a resonant image of natural fragility and mutability, but also registers the affirming cycles of birth and renewal that characterise living things. In these latest collages, the recurring patterns of nature and culture are pictured and intriguingly interwoven.
David Morris
Head of Collections and Curator (Prints)
The Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester