IT’S a series of uncomfortable worlds that Henny Acloque has created for her solo exhibition at the Ceri Hand Gallery. This is fantasy without the feelgood factor, more HP Lovecraft than Enid Blyton.
Figurative monkeys inhabit abstract places – poised at the edge of floating doorways and arches to unknown parallel universes.
“I never like to have anything that finishes, so I always include a continuous element in my paintings, the idea of passing through one into something else,” explains Acloque. “If you go into the arches you could go through into a better world or it might be to a worse one.”
The London-based painter is fond of contrasts, with works that range from paperback-size canvases to those that take up an entire wall.
Her palette includes murky greys and blacks as well as soft pastels and metallic gold, which she paints in watercolours over acrylic.
Acloque’s travels, particularly to Spain, are a direct influence on her work.
A series of pieces depicting monkeys are named after her experiences abroad – St Fiacre, the patron saint of widows, and St Bernadette, “a nun I spoke to a lot in a convent in Seville”.
Other works show the beasts in pointed hats, reminiscent of the punishments employed by the Spanish Inquisition, and impossible to separate from images of the Ku Klux Klan.
Acloque, whose paintings feature historical references and allegorical motifs, daubs the canvases with layers of varnish, cleaning each one off before applying the next. The larger works – bleak expanses, some adorned with garlands (wreaths?) of chalky flowers – have a more chaotic feel than the precise, diminutive pieces.
Paint runs down them, bringing movement to an otherwise barren surface, home to the occasional tiny detail – another monkey, perhaps, or an implement of torture.
“The void in the larger paintings is a very important dynamic space because it gives more of an opportunity for chance to plays its part,” says Acloque, who is influenced by Netherlandish painters Hieronymus Bosch and Pieter Brueghel, as well as Victorian fairy paintings.
Some of the ideas behind the exhibition feel incomplete, but it is nonetheless intriguing.
HENNY ACLOQUE: A Dressing opens tonight at the Ceri Hand Gallery, Cotton Street, Liverpool, and runs until August 2.
