Lines of Site

In this exhibition of very contemporary works, artist Debbie Loftus explores the resonance of shattered fragments and fractured lines within the harmonious flowing arabesques of the Parthenon frieze.

 

Debbie Loftus, Blind Eye View, triptych central panel (Copyright: the artist)

 

The bleached and broken stones that make up the Parthenon frieze as we see it today are like an immense beautiful jigsaw from which innumerable pieces have been lost. Those absences are poignant because they remind us that we are seeing isolated pieces of a distant, seemingly perfect world that can never be recaptured in its pristine entirety.

But this vision of the shattered stones is a romantic creation.

The colour choices made by ancient artists can seem garish to modern eyes, while the Parthenon itself is a war memorial, paid for with protection money. Over the centuries the magnificent temple and sculptures have suffered immense damage: some of it accidental, but mostly caused deliberately by vandals and warring factions.

The weathered stones that survive are facets of a historical process that stretches back 2,500 years. The stories they tell, recorded in the fractures and absences that inform Lines of Site, resonate richly with contemporary life.

 

The series was made during a time of chaotic political upheaval, and it explores both historical and contemporary ideas about social order, ideology, power and loss.

Debbie Loftus

For Loftus, the process of making the artworks involved the artistic decision to erase, destroy or replace areas of laboriously worked imagery, then layering the fragments to create new wholes.

 

Moreover, the opinions of visitors on the question of whether the Parthenon marbles belong in London or Athens also informed her approach: 'When I was drawing in the British Museum I was privileged to overhear many opinions on the subject, expressed by the many visitors who liked to come and stand next to me as I worked. As an artist, I felt it was my role to see and hear, while remaining as unobtrusive and unobserved as possible. That experience contributed to my title: Lines of Site.'

 

Second Sight: Braille, tactile images and the Parthenon Frieze

The works in this show began as a suite of six layered drawings exhibited at the British Museum in 2015, when Debbie Loftus was artist–in–residence for the premiere of a new cantata, Panathenaia by Thomas Hewitt Jones and Paul Williamson. In these works, Loftus engages directly with the bodily senses but also with their absence - hearing and not hearing an absent musical score, but also seeing and not seeing...

In the Braille-inspired triptych, Loftus takes inspiration from the 1998 publication, Second Sight of the Parthenon Frieze, which uses Braille and tactile images to communicate the composition of the frieze for blind and partially sighted users.