Viky Garden - Grit

From her earliest surviving work, Self Portrait at 16 (1977), Viky Garden has consistently challenged the assumption that portraiture is no longer relevant in contemporary art. Garden’s work, whether it be painting, pinhole photography or sculpture, has from the very beginning, engaged in a self-reflective study of the political sphere of womanhood, in which she uses her own body as a form of language.

Garden’s current exhibition, GRIT, is an eloquent, yet unapologetic exploration of the physical and
emotional challenges faced by women as they transition through menopause. The paintings negotiate the halfway point between the awe-inspiring and the often shocking changes that invariably lead to re-evaluations of identity and purpose.

To illustrate this point, Garden uses the wooden ends of redundant paintbrushes and bits of card to
push the paint onto the canvas, employing swatches, streaks and splashes of colour to link each work in a journey that is so fluid that her subjects can embody all ages interchangeably. She also makes use of the canvas selvage as part of the work’s narrative, alluding to an approaching brink or limit.

By eschewing traditional wooden stretchers, Garden works against the conventional taut canvas
surface, utilising the natural imperfections and inconsistencies of the fabric to emphasise themes of
ageing and transition, themes also reflected in the frayed edges of each portrait. Mounted at a slight
distance from the wall, these unstretched paintings appear to float or hover – creating their own
shadow – an ephemeral effect that speaks to inevitable change through the passing of time.

At a time when large-scale paintings are de rigueur in the art world, Garden has transformed
second-hand miniature frames from the 1970s, creating a series of ‘ready-mades’ called Ikons. There is a sense of almost reckless abandon about her technique, pushing the limit of where the paint stops and the frame begins. The result is a collection of tiny enigmatic portraits barely contained within the frames they threaten to breach. These Ikon miniatures reference the Greek Orthodox/Roman Catholic iconography of her Greek/Polish heritage, while larger works in the show place the feminine within more traditional metallic pewter iconographic backgrounds.

GRIT is a poignant reminder of impermanence and change, reflecting and rearticulating the personal
and universal aspects of female mutability that has characterised Garden’s output over three decades. Painted during the Covid pandemic, these visceral, deliberately unrefined images speak to the present through a restrained yet direct and unflinching gaze, subtly considering notions of identity, isolation & vulnerability within a perspective that is emotionally & intellectually edifying and wholly feminine.