Mon 3 December 2007

Iniva presents mo’lasses III by Philomena Francis

A newly commissioned Installation work in treacle In the front window, Rivington Place, London, UK 5 December 2007 – 5 January 2008

Iniva has commissioned Philomena Francis to create an installation in treacle to occupy Rivington Place's expansive front window which overlooks Rivington Street in Shoreditch, London. On show from 5 December 2007 - 5 January 2008, this is the first window commission at Rivington Place, which it is set to become an annual event.

The installation entitled mo'lasses III has been created using piped black treacle and continues Francis' enquiry around the black female body, its contemporary representation and relationship to colonial history. Her work arouses questions about identity and in particular explores the complexity of viewing the black female body.

The popular term ‘brown sugar' and its association with black female sexuality becomes a starting point for the artist to re-appropriate and re-situate the black body into another chosen context that engenders alternative readings.

Philomena Francis has also used sugar and treacle in her previous wall-based and installation works such as The Brown Sugar Series (2004) and mo'lasses I and II (2005/6). The behavioural and material qualities of the treacle and how it responds to its supporting structure or site, references a stream of associations and physical sensations that create an image that fluctuates between abstraction and figuration.

Francis was born in 1969 in London. She studied Fine Art Theory and Practice at Chelsea College of Art and Design and graduated in 2006 with a first class honours degree. She lives and works as an Artist and Art Therapist in London. An emerging talent, Francis' work has been exhibited as part of group exhibition Neither fish nor flesh at the Space Gallery (London, UK) in 2003. The Brown Sugar Series was shown in 2004 at a solo exhibition at The Castle (Northampton, UK) and Francis was part of a conceptual group exhibition The Exchange at the Woburn Gallery (London, UK).

For more information see the Iniva website