A Tragical Romance is an evocative exhibition exploring the transcendent potential of the human body through the works of artists Leah Clements, Rebecca Jagoe, Korallia Stergides and Marianne Vlaschits. Moving beyond the conventional boundaries of human form, these artists delve into non-human connections, embracing the natural and supernatural realms to create a narrative of unity and interconnectedness.
The exhibition challenges the able-bodied perspective, highlighting how desire, love, and intimacy can foster new forms of crip embodiment. The works presented in A Tragical Romance engage with elements such as water, rocks, ghosts, and animals, inviting viewers to consider an over-identification with the external world. This shift is articulated through various mediums, including photography, sculpture, painting and performance, with text serving as a central axis for this exploration.
The artworks reflect a profound sentimentality, addressing the fantasy of crossing the human/non-human divide and the grim reality of our toxic relationship with nature in the face of climate destruction. This exhibition draws parallels with the Romantic era, known for its intense emotions and fascination with the sublime. Like the Romantics, these contemporary works navigate the interplay between beauty and darkness, exploring themes of sorrow, loss, and the fragility of life. In doing so, they offer a contemplative reflection on mortality, particularly through the lens of illness and disability.
Between Flesh and Fantasy: Performances
Saturday, 14th September at 5.30pm
Low Roaming Cloud by Korallia Stergides is a meditative journey through the landscapes of mourning and sensorial memory. In a blend of poetry, performance, and song, Stergides weaves together personal loss with reflections on childhood, illness, and care, creating a space where the boundaries between human and animal, self and other, blur. This work challenges the distinctions between species and the material world, while also exploring the embodied experiences of illness. Stergides invites us to consider how memory and materiality intertwine, reflecting the delicate balance between presence and absence in a world where all beings are interconnected.
with your teeth by Rebecca Jagoe delves into the intense fear of change and the yearning for permanence in romantic obsession. Using metaphors of cannibalism and the unsettling mating rituals of deep-sea anglerfish, Jagoe examines how desire can slip into possessiveness, how the longing for love can become a desire to merge, to lose oneself in another. This performance questions the boundaries of individual identity and explores the dissolution of self into a larger, unchanging entity. It also contemplates the complexities of bodies, love, and the desire for a future free of pain and uncertainty.
Trigger Warning:
These performances contain intense themes of anxiety, loss, and desire for extreme closeness. It includes graphic descriptions of body invasion and fusion, sexual content, raw meat, blood and references to death and cannibalism. Viewer discretion is advised.
Existential Themes and Dissolution – Existential discussions about the self, stasis, and a desire to dissolve into the universe or the ocean.
Between Flesh and Fantasy: A Conversation on Bodies and Archives
Wednesday, 16th October at 6pm
As part of the group exhibition A Tragical Romance for Curated By, this conversation brings together artist Marianne Vlaschits, curator Mariana Lemos, and historian-theorist Lisa Moravec to explore the intersections of the body, archives, and the cosmos. Using Vlaschits’ paintings Celestial Mechanics and Glitch Music 2.0 as focal points, we will discuss how these works frame the body as an archive and the archive as a living body.
Celestial Mechanics draws inspiration from 16th-century scientific illustrations in the archives of the Institute for Astrophysics at the University of Vienna, transforming these historical images to blur the lines between the celestial and the human. Glitch Music 2.0 connects the stuttering rhythms of neutron stars with the elemental composition of our bodies, reflecting Vlaschits’ own experience of stuttering as an embodied archive, intertwining personal and cosmic narratives.
The discussion will also delve into how Vlaschits’ work resonates with the exhibition’s themes, particularly in exploring new perspectives on embodiment and the limits of human identity. We will consider how her art redefines the boundaries between the human and non-human, and examine how artistic practice itself can serve as a living archive of both personal and universal histories.
Curated by
Mariana Lemos (b. 1991, Lisbon), is an independent curator based in London. Her practice focuses on performance art, affect, queer/feminist phenomenologies, and issues related to illness and disability. She holds an MFA in Curating from Goldsmiths University of London (2020) and a BA in Fine Arts (2015).
Her curatorial approach centres on public programming, accessibility, and feminist methodologies, often working collectively and collaboratively. Lemos is a member of the FDRG feminist reading group and the SALOON London board. She was Co-Editor at Mercurius Magazine and has written for Art Review, Flash Art, Mousse and Concreta. She has worked as the studio manager for artist Angela de La Cruz and in galleries such as Lisson Gallery, Union Pacific, Arcadia Missa, Black Tower, and the Feminist Library. Recent projects include ‘Vaivém’ by Francisca Pinto at Ostra, Lisbon (PT/2024); ‘DIG IN: Maisie Maris & Laura Mallows’ at Staffordshire St, London (UK/2023); ‘INSOMNIA’ by Leah Clements at South Kiosk, London (UK/2022-23); and ‘Oceanic Feelings’ at Electro Studios Space, St Leonards (UK/2021).
