Ilona Szalay

Ilona Szalay’s paintings trace a path through a world of conflict and power play, a place of rigid hierarchy.

There are those with power over others who enjoy an elevated status. They are the ruler makers, uniformed and armed, protecting and/or controlling. They are the police, the army, the elders, the cameras, the surveillance equipment, the 'men in charge', the bestowers of gifts and accolades, the givers of rewards. They wear badges, hats, boots, glasses, carry guns, ride horses.

There are others holding themselves still in order to be catalogued or accounted for, captured in some way. They will be fixed, held down and examined, peered into.

The paintings contain an undercurrent of menace, something inevitable which is handed down or passed on. This ineffable component is attractive and compelling. It is, in a sense, an absence or something that has been obscured but is nevertheless felt and experienced as 'otherness'. Something nameless has been endured, and left its trace or mark. This 'hidden' aspect of the work is important, it is the melancholic, the adult, the infinite.

The paintings examine the ideas and issues described here, exploring notions of dominance and submission, violence, protection and control, vulnerability and beauty.



Biography
Ilona Szalay is an emerging contemporary painter living and working in London. Born in Beirut, Lebanon in 1975, she graduated in 1997 with a BA (English literature) from Brasenose College, Oxford University. Later, in 2002, she was awarded an M.A (fine art) from the Byam Shaw School of Arts, now part of the Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, London. In 2006, she was short-listed for the Celeste Painting Prize. Ilona’s work has been exhibited in a number of solo and group exhibitions largely in London. Group shows include Surface-Image-Event, at the Standpoint Gallery (2009), Shadowline and They Paved Paradise, Beverley Knowles Fine Art (2007 and 2008 respectively) and the summer exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts, London (2008). Solo shows have appeared at the London Art Fair Project Space, Islington (2007), the Art Space Gallery, Dubai (2005) and the Al Riwaq Art Gallery, Manama, Bahrain (2004/05).


Medals (detail)
Oil on Canvas
100 x 76cms
Price on application
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Other paintings: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15

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