Selina Foote
The Balcony

The design for The Balcony – Selina Foote’s new series of abstract works – began with familiar nineteenth century paintings, gathered from reproductions found in art books.  From here, through a system of self-prescribed rules, Selina sets out to radically defamiliarise the original image. The formal qualities of line and the use of restricted colour now hold only the barest relation to the originals.  And yet, the materiality of painting, lost in the technologies of reproduction, has been retrieved, while also offering a series of images that possess their own seductive sovereignty. 

If the viewer so desires, small puzzles are waiting to be untangled. Selina provides a hint in the title of the show, The Balcony, which leads from Manet back to Goya, to affairs and shadowy forms lurking in the dark, to a sunlit Morisot on the balcony, and to the continuing fascination of younger artists, such Magritte. Her web of lines flow back through European art history hinting at figuration, patterning, and the pull of mimetic desire.