immortals - recent exhibition

immortals gallery

• portraits - mixed media
• portraits - pattern heads
• portraits - marble heads

immortals cast list

immortals characteristics      

press release

concept

contact

The pictures are now on show at mint and nawar (see home page for details)

 “You don’t stay the hottest guy forever unless you’re, um, Dionysus” (Josh Hartnett 2004)

Hollywood stars are like the Gods of Mount Olympus; the ultimate A-list; powerful, colourful, magnificent. Helen David believes there is a significant correspondence between Gods and film-stars and develops this theme in her latest work.  Living in an age of mass communication, we are spellbound by uber-celebrities, we follow their lives, we celebrate their talents and we, hoi polloi, aspire to be like them.

The significance of celebrity has developed, and since the coining of the word paparazzo (from a character in Fellini’s film La Dolce Vita in the early sixties), it has grown to an almost obsessive level.  A thriving industry of celebrity-based magazines and television shows has developed to feed this interest.  Although the industry is based on a symbiotic relationship, famous personalities do not always want to play the celebrity game, and would prefer to have a clear division between their public selves and their veridical (private and genuine) selves, especially once the heights of success have been attained.

In the mythology of the Greek gods, certain archetypes occur.  Their iconography is strengthened by having visual attributes that are easily recognised throughout the western world, so that, for example, a lyre becomes symbolic of Apollo, a deer and bow and arrow symbolise Artemis.  Similarly in film-star iconography, a bubbly peroxide-blonde hairstyle and a pout symbolise Marilyn Monroe, a cowboy hat, poncho and cheroot symbolise Clint Eastwood.

To the ancients, stories of the Olympian Gods’ passion and hatreds, deceptions and feuds, were a constant source of intrigue and inspiration.  They fed the same sort of curiosity that OK, Hello and I’m a celebrity get me out of here cater for now.

Hollywood stars are human, but have god-like qualities. Greek Gods were immortal, but had human qualities.  Hollywood stars inhabit the Hollywood hills. Greek gods inhabited Mount Olympus.

In portraiture, the representation of real people as gods is a classic device, it has been used by artists as divers as the painter Gainsborough and the photographer Madame Yevonde.

Immortals is a series of intensely coloured, mixed-media portraits that coalesce modern technology (digital printing) with ancient hand-skills (sewing) to celebrate the mythic nature of Hollywood celebrities, who are “cast” as Greek Gods. Included in the cast are George Clooney as Poseidon,

Johnny Depp as Dionysus, Scarlett Johansson as Aphrodite, Nicole Kidman as Artemis, Jude Law as Apollo, Brad Pitt as Hermes and Sharon Stone as Hera.

For further information on Immortals,  please contact Laura Parker Bowles on 020 7823 5540 or see contacts page