PROJECT PYGMALION: Artists Give New Life to Ancient Story in Experimental Exhibition

BERMONDSEY, U.K. - March 28, 2016 - PRLog -- Open for one weekend only this exhibition offers a free gallery with an interactive tour and a ticketed evening bill of live performances.

The story tells of an artist who, dissatisfied with real women, creates an ivory statue so perfect that he falls in love with it. The Goddess Venus grants his desires by breathing life into the statue and giving Pygmalion a "real woman" to love.

An ancient story is reconstructed in this free weekend exhibition by a diverse group of artists. By day the natural light fills the studio to capture several visual artists' responses to the story, with a daily interactive tour taking the audience on a physical exploration. The blurring of the boundaries between audience and artwork highlight the paradox of object and subject, and question the relationship between art and reality in a modern era.

As night falls the gallery turns theatre to a host of live performance, each act examining their own chosen element of the myth. Evening headliners "Siberian Lights", emerging all-female theatre company, have joined with the collective for the project to explore this gendered tale of creator and creation.

"The project has been created in the space of one month, with each artist bringing a fragment to create the whole"

-Alice Robinson, co-founder of the Collective

A panel of judges have selected the project for the Ugly Duck, a multi-disciplinary project space producing work that dynamically engages its audience, to form part of their Ancient Myth Weekender; upstairs an installation "OE" explores the Greek story of lovers Orpheus and Eurydice.

"The presentation of the work innovatively bridges the distance between art and audience."

-Fiona Campbell, Guest Judge for Ugly Duck

Exhibition Dates: Saturday April 23^rd - Sunday 24^th April 2016

Gallery Opening Times: 11am-5.30pm and 8pm-10.30pm

Performances: 2pm and 6.30pm daily

Location: Ugly Duck, 47-49 Tanner Street, London, SE1 3PL

About CrossArts Collective

CrossArts Collective has been co-founded by visual artist Sukey Sleeper and actor Alice Robinson. Their mission is to bring together a diverse network of emerging artists, providing a platform for original work and exploration.

Sukey Sleeper is a visual artist with the Cambridge Art Salon. After studying Fine Art, she went on to read Classics at Cambridge where she was introduced to the poetry of Ovid and the story of Pygmalion. Her work draws on images from Western art history, social media, and sex doll catalogues; exploring the fragmentation of gendered bodies.

Alice Robinson is a recent RADA acting graduate and writer, whose original work focuses on the re-examining of old stories in order to tell new ones. Her last piece "Seven Ages of Woman" took another literary stimulus, dissecting Shakespeare's Seven Ages of Man speech in order to find parallels for a modern day woman.

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