After working with RA graduate Suzanne Moxhay for a number of years, ‘Vestibule’ is our first limited edition print with the artist. Read more about the work below.
In the English language, ‘vestibule’ is sometimes used as another word for a hallway, foyer or doorway, but more loosely it can be used to describe a portal or a middle ground between two spaces, like a gateway or a passageway.
Having previously focused on vast open, rather ‘post-apocalyptic’ spaces in her photo-collage works, where pieces such as ‘Halcyon’ (2008), ‘Highway’ (2009) and ‘Migration’ (2009) took centre stage, over the past couple of years
Suzanne Moxhay has turned her eye to interiors. This doesn’t mean however that she’s disregarded the landscape altogether - far from it in fact. Her new body of work, which includes the popular
Copse released earlier this year, sees the artist fuse together indoor and outdoor spaces to create areas that are somewhere in between; almost like an entryway to either the internal or the external, or perhaps another dimension entirely.
With this in mind, it makes sense that ‘Vestibule’ is Moxhay’s chosen title for her new Eyestorm edition, which we’re launching online today. Created using a combination of her own photographs and found imagery, the intriguing and beautifully pieced together
Vestibule is an excellent example of how the artist plays with our preconceptions and welcomes us into her enchanting world.
At first glance, we feel we’re looking at a photograph of a room in a derelict house, which in a sense, we are; Moxhay stumbled across an old building on a recent trip to Italy where she took the image that forms the basis of this piece. After closer inspection however, we start seeing elements that question our sense of normality. Moxhay loves to play with scale in her work, and this is demonstrated in the trees that appear to be growing to the left of the image by the stairs, as well as the rather oversized moths that are flying around the room. But the most thought-provoking part of this piece for me is the way Moxhay fuses together notions of the interior and the exterior.
Aside from the immediately obvious references of windows and the door, which gives us an idea of internal and external due to the light coming through and a glimpse of the landscape outside, what’s interesting here is the image that appears on the back wall either side of the door. Depicting a mountainous landscape, it poses the question of whether it exists as a painted mural or a gateway to another dimension, through and beyond the wall, even beyond the landscape outside - a ‘Narnia’ type territory that can only be accessed from this room. I love the attention to detail and the way the moon appears subtly amongst ‘clouds’ that look like layers of warn down paintwork, adding to the mystery of the idealistic existence that may lie beyond these desolate four walls.
Often when I write about an artist’s work I’ll ask them to talk about their ideas behind the piece and what they were looking to achieve, but occasionally I’ll decide to draw my own conclusions; after all art is subjective and while it can be interesting to know where the artist was coming from, it can also be exciting discovering things for yourself, and this was the case with
Vestibule. For me this piece signifies many things, but overall it simply represents hope.
Vestibule is a limited edition of 30 and available at the launch price of XXX. See the piece in more detail and see other available works by Suzanne Moxhay
here .