EXHIBITION RECEPTION
Saturday May 11th 4-6pm
Contact GALLERY@WINSTONWACHTER.COM for more information
Viewed as separate from love and lust, the Psychology Today describes limerence as “a state of involuntary obsession with another person. The experience of limerence is different from love or lust in that it is based on the uncertainty that the person you desire, also desires you.” Claire Partington’s latest body of work, The Limerents, focuses on this state of all consuming obsession, taking inspiration from both art history and current social media.
In the Greek Myth of Daphne and Apollo, the nymph Daphne famously transforms into a tree to avoid the advances of Apollo. Apollo however, had been struck by Cupid’s arrow, which caused his state of limerence - Apollo had teased Cupid, and Cupid, angered by the insults, shot Apollo with a golden arrow, causing him to fall in love with the first person he saw. Daphne however had been shot by Cupid’s lead-tipped arrow causing her to be impervious to love.
Echo and Narcissus likewise are engaged in this nonreciprocal obsessive state. Echo, cursed by Goddess Juno to only repeat the words of others, becomes infatuated with Narcissus, who spurns her advances. Narcissus is in turn punished by Nemesis to fall in love with his own reflection in a pool of water, which can never be reciprocated.
Partington’s figures exist somewhere between the ancient and contemporary, staring longingly and limerently into their phones, frozen in a state of all consuming obsession.
Claire Partington graduated from Central Saint Martins in 1995 with a 1st in Fine Art Sculpture and gained a Post Graduate qualification in Museum Studies in 2000. She started making ceramic works after attending night school classes in 2005. Her work features in notable international collections including the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool, National Museums Scotland, Victoria & Albert Museum in London, the Museum of London, Seattle Art Museum, Ömer Koç Collection, Istanbul and the Reyden Weiss Collection in Germany. She was awarded a Contemporary Art Society Commission in 2022 with the Walker Art Gallery, and was the recipient of the Virginia A Groot award in 2018.
