Towards the Light : Anne Desmet

In this exhibition over 40 new unique collages, wood engravings and lithographs created between 2016 and 2018 will bring together an eclectic and playful mix of Desmet’s preferred subject matter.  Babel Towers not only reach skywards but actually take flight along with other recognisable buildings and red phone boxes soaring through azure and indigo skies like rocket-ships. A spectacular series of meticulously observed wood engravings inspired by Monet’s Rouen Cathedrals shows the Manhattan skyline passing from day to night in every type of wind and weather whilst the RA’s 250th anniversary year inspires a sequence of new lithographs exploring the Academy’s newly metamorphosed campus. An artist’s residency at Eton College (2016) inspired a sequence of architectural engravings directly inspired by Eton’s neo-classical and Tudor buildings yet providing a fertile point of imaginative departure for lithographs such as ‘Urban Jungle’ in which the college’s Tudor chimneys become a tangled forest suggesting Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast or else an early warning of potential global warming.