Victoria Miro is delighted to return to Frieze London. The gallery’s booth this year will feature a special presentation in tribute to Paula Rego, who died in June at the age of 87.
The fruit of a lifetime in the studio, the works on view are among the last large-scale pastels completed by the artist. Free and exuberant, they blend autobiographical elements, folk tales and other stories, while drawing inspiration from the mannequins, dolls and masks that Rego staged in her London studio in order to create the characters and narratives that unfold in her work. For the artist a process of discovery was essential. As she said, ‘The story progresses and changes as it goes along, it becomes something else over time, a story that I really want.’
Sophie’s Misfortunes (Les Malheurs de Sophie), the 1858 children’s book by the Comtesse de Ségur, a story loved by Rego from childhood, provides a connecting thread. Among Sophie’s misdeeds and misfortunes in de Ségur’s story is the unintentional melting of her wax doll, and on view will be Sofia, 2017, a studio prop comprising two papier-mâché dolls, suspended from their heads, one with its features intact, the other with eye holes as dark sockets and blood trailing from its mouth. The dolls appear as the central motif in the large-scale pastel work Split, 2017, where the cause of this mistreatment appears to be a young boy standing beside them, brandishing a sword.
Other works, populated by characters of at times dubious motive and filled with by turns wicked and drolly humorous incident, illuminate the dynamics of power that occupied Rego throughout her career. Rego was a peerless storyteller, and her art stands as a fearless exploration of human relationships and the complexities of human experience. These late works exemplify the deep psychological insight and imaginative force that she brought to figurative art, sustained across narratives, through motifs and over decades.
Additionally on view will be works by Milton Avery, Hernan Bas, María Berrío, Secundino Hernández, Kudzanai-Violet Hwami, Chantal Joffe, Doron Langberg, Wangechi Mutu, Chris Ofili, Celia Paul, Grayson Perry, Conrad Shawcross and Hedda Sterne.
NS Harsha’s bronze sculpture Desired for – Arrived at, 2021, is on view as part of Frieze Sculpture (14 September–13 November 2022), curated by Clare Lilley.
