“Michael Petry celebrates the ceremonial, memorialises the mythical and acknowledges, honours and explores the deeper spirits within us whom we all feel and hear yet have always found hard to name. Our gods and our devils.”
Stephen Fry
The main body of Michael Petry’s exhibition, ‘In League with Devils’, consists of bronze sculptures from the last decade supplemented by more recent works including a new series of Heaven paintings. All the works deal with historic and current belief systems.
The main piece, the large-scale installation, At the Foot of the Gods, was originally commissioned for the 1st Biënnale Oosterhout (2017, Netherlands). The work is made up of almost one hundred bronze casts of human toes that appear, at first, to have been broken off Classical Greek sculptures. Other works include the large bronze, Apollo’s Mirror, that has been patinated on one side to appear ancient, while the reverse is polished so that viewers can clearly see themselves. Petry’s Gifts of Apollo are solid bronze which are first silver plated then 24k gold plated.
Petry has made several new bronzes for the exhibition at Vane, including Ha-Nahash (The Serpent), the Hebrew name for the serpent said to have tempted Adam and Eve, which is never called Satan in the Torah or original Old Testament versions. Equally as arresting is Libation to Baal, a bronze lingam, a totem to the god whose cult required the sacrifice of human babies. The Heaven paintings are part of his series, Landscape and Gods, and are based on the religious ideas of what heaven looks like for the many differing faiths.
Work from the project is included in the hardback book, In League with Devils (price £20), looking at Petry’s work from the last decade. The book includes a foreword by actor and author Stephen Fry, with essays by the Director of The Dadian Gallery, Aaron Rosen, and independent curators, Daniell Cornell, and Rick Herron. The artist will be present at the exhibition preview to sign copies of the book
In League with Devils, Michael Petry, 14th November – 7th December 2024, Vane
Artist’s talk: Michael Petry: In League with Devils Saturday 7th December 5PM-6.30pm email events@vane.org.uk to book a place
