Splitting The Life

Luke-Kelly presents a series of works on paper referring to an image from Francisco José de Goya’s Madrid Album (c1795-97). Theorised to depict a carnival scene in Andalusia, the motif of two men rapturously sawing an elderly woman in two is strange and unfamiliar. The original meaning of the custom and why Goya chose to portray it has been lost, leaving a vacuum for the artist to fill. The work seeks to emphasise the lasting power of Goya’s original composition as it speaks to the violence, oppression, and misogyny that exists today. The apparent submission of the female figure and the detectable comedic sensibility produces an air of uneasiness. The use of repetition creates a Warholian degree of dislocation that unnervingly numbs us to the threat whilst also inviting the act of painting to become the subject. Revealing an interest in the relationship of landscape to the production and storage of folklore and mythology, the figures have a tendency to become implanted in a cliff face or to morph into elements of a rural vista, their mutability emphasising their enduring survival.