LONDON.- Losq places the notion of ‘The Clearing’ as central to her practice and imagery – a place where wilderness and chaos oppose civilization and order. She depicts liminal landscapes that hover at the edges of this symbolic Clearing, alluding to the English 'Gothic' of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, as typified by fragmented narratives relating mysterious incidents, and scenes that were charged with an imagined threat. 

The exhibition title ‘Nemora’ refers to a “nemus” (pl nemora) which is described in Jacob Grimm’s Teutonic Mythology as being “a woodland pasture, a grove, a sacrum silvae”.  These were places of celebration and sacrifice, where the entire grove or particular trees therein were dedicated to woodland deities: “Such a grove was not to be trodden by profane feet, such a tree was not to be stript of its boughs or foliage, and on no account to be hewn down” (Teutonic Mythology Vol 2 trans J Stallybrass, p.648. CUP 2012, First published 1883)

Losq works over the surface repetitively, creating multiple painted layers which simultaneously obscure and reveal those beneath. She works on both paper and canvas and has incorporated found objects to create installation pieces. In ‘Nemora’, she shows three object based pieces including a work on paper that infuses itself with the existing ornate fire place on the ground floor of the gallery. Another work sees a wave of paper tumble from an antique grandfather clock across the contemporary gallery floor.

Losq incorporates imagery derived from various sources including rococo prints, Victorian newspaper illustrations, and science fiction and horror films. This becomes inextricably woven with the detritus of the marginal areas that she describes. By colonizing her scenes with Rococo imagery she draws attention to how the excessive use of natural forms in our culture have rendered their vitality impotent – removing them far from their original forms.

Juliette Losq (b.1978 UK) received degrees in English Literature and History of Art at Newnham College, Cambridge (BA 2000), History of Art at the Courtauld Institute of Art (MA 2001), Fine Art at Wimbledon College of Art (BA 2007), and a Post-Graduate Diploma in Fine Art (2010) at the Royal Academy Schools, London. Losq won the Jerwood drawing prize in 2005, and was shortlisted for the Catlin Art Prize 2011. In 2014, she has shortlisted for the John Moore Prize. Losq’s installation Wunderkammer was acquired by the Saatchi Collection.