This body of work (a series of paintings) comprises the outcome of research into the ancien-regime or pre-revolution aristocracy in France, as it is portrayed: firstly, in films conforming to the genre of romantic historical fiction (such as Patrice Chereau’s La Reine Margot, 1994 and Sophia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette,
2006); secondly in a series of contes de fées (fairy tales) written by aristocratic intellectuals (notably Marie Catherine d’Aunloy) in Paris salons of the late seventeenth century.

The latter are stories in which the gossip and intrigues of court life are satirised in fantastical form—the characters possessing supernatural as well as institutional power. This research identifies that both of the above genres (in their fictional engagement with the idea of the ancien-regime) stage an imaginary conflict of tradition and modernity; a crisis in the formation of a modern bourgeois consciousness (which the paintings seek to dramatise through their formal language and re-address to a contemporary context).

The paintings were generated using techniques of theatrical production design to create figures, costumes, and décor. These elements were designed separately then brought together using basic digital compositing techniques—essentially a process of collage. This method is used to adapt and juxtapose of elements from a range of cultural sources and time periods whilst maintaining a tangible flavour of the visual conventions of “period” cinema.

Drawing an approach from Hollywood costume dramas (in which the depiction of a given past is often shaped by the filmmakers’ contemporary sensibility), an implausible excess of anachronism is present in each painting. Overtly modern forms (minimalist and surrealist art, 1990s fashion and so forth) are depicted alongside rococo and medieval elements. “Historical romance” merges with the visual ambience of science fiction and speculative fiction—genres that are typically concerned with the decay or obsolescence of modernity itself.

In the “scenes” depicted in the paintings a member of the ruling elite is shown having “lunch” with two deities or fairies (spirits of modernity, whose names recall the goddesses of Greek mythology). The deities are dressed in costumes inspired by modernist art works, including a gown and wig shaped like Robert Morris’s Untitled L Beams (1965). Their mortal guest carries a Fendi bag; her bonnet is based on those worn by women in France at the time of the Revolution.

This body of work forms part of ongoing research into what the art historian Catriona McAra has called “the anachronistic union, and narrative possibilities, of Surrealism and the fairy tale” (two distinct genres of the fantastic). The paintings were exhibited in the group exhibition ‘Red Gym’, which took place at FAHRBEREITSCHAFT, Berlin (in September – October 2022) and consisted of work by contemporary Berlin-based and Glasgow-Based artists.

• https://redgym.info/