Katabasis: Come on Down – Sal Higgens

15th October – 4th November, 2012

Opening Night:
Thursday 18th of October 6.00 – 8.00pm

Sal Higgens invites us to glimpse the ecstasy, anguish and terror of the underworld; populated by chimerical female beings, sentinels at the gateway, they exude otherworldliness.

Her paintings are unflinching, tumultuous and heroic. The elegance and fluidity of her brushwork belies an inherent brutality, each work pervaded by a fresh violence. Fusing a sense of dominance, strength and success with an emotional aggression and sadness implicit in the suggestion of death. These are archeological excursions into the land of the dead.

It is in our recognition of the mythological subjects, in our familiarity with them, that we see a reflection of ourselves, something of our human desire to conquer. Poised on the cusp between two worlds we are simultaneously seduced and repulsed, echoes oscillating between the dreamer and the dreamt.

[the work] positively throbs with the veinal reality of what it is like to be human…..The raw emotional quality of the work impresses but, more than this, it is Sal’s refusal to deliver a beautiful picture because it would tell us less about what it is to be human.
– Patricia Preece, Arts Writer UK

>> Online catalogue available here <<