September 2010

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Marlborough Fine Art is currently hosting Paula Rego: Oratorio, the artist’s first solo exhibition in London since 2006. The centrepiece is the exhibition’s namesake, a mixed-media triptych (see above) that Rego created for her exhibition with Tracey Emin and Matt Collishaw at the Foundling Museum, London, earlier this year. Larger in scale and with more physical detail than her controversial Abortion series of 1999 – which lead to Portugal’s referendum on the legality of abortion – the works aggressively confront issues of female genital mutilation, or ‘circumcision’. Accompanied by several preparatory drawings, large conté works on paper and 19 etchings in monochrome, printed in editions of 35 and then hand painted, the show brings together Rego’s most recent works, reassuringly demonstrating that the artist still has all the humanity, passion and vigour a woman needs to maintain her place as one of the 21^st-century’s greats.

In Portugal, an Oratorio is a personal devotional altar that many households still maintain, including Rego’s own childhood home. A museum-like piece in its own right, Rego has inverted the domestic altar, creating its evil ‘altar-ego’, to publicly criticise, with aesthetic rage and horror, various forms of domestic abuse. The protruding shelf at the bottom of Rego's Oratorio is the most disturbing. The child-like dolls dressed in the Foundling Hospital uniform, haphazardly stuffed like Rego’s other monster-toys that often feature in her paintings, with a backdrop of scenes including rape and a caricature based on the notorious photograph of Michael Jackson dangling his child over a balcony, become uncomfortable imitations of the orphanage’s beneficiaries.

The complementary two-dimensional works depict similar butcher-like scenes, complete with Rego’s emotional and humanitarian charge. They are strong in content, unashamedly dealing with political taboos, while reminding us that she is ‘master’ of the figurative. Oratorio, the exhibition, has an unforgettable aesthetic impact, proving that Rego and the Marlborough are still at the cutting edge of Fine Art.

Paula Rego: Oratorio is on at Marlborough Fine Art until 20 August.

www.marlboroughfineart.com

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