Opening Saturday 14 September 2002

Eva Breuer Art Dealer is pleased to announce Rosemary Valadon’s exciting new exhibition of paintings and works on paper, The Looking Glass in the Garden of the Interior. In her first solo show with the gallery, Valadon entices us with beautifully vibrant and sophisticated imagery that is sure to stir the imagination.

This exhibition steps behind the imagination’s mirror into the internal world of childhood. With echoes of children’s stories and myths, these works lead into a place where there is a garden, spring is the season and curiosity, heavy quiet contemplation, joy, pleasure, playfulness and vivacity are the predominant moods. In this looking glass of a mother’s experience, the memory of girlhood has shadows; the garden, the golden afternoon, inversions of childhood tales, allusions to nursery rhymes, old picture books, nightmares and dreams, toys that are vivid, sinister, animated, full of menace and beloved all at once.

There is timelessnes and urgent growth, innocence and cruelty in the garden of the interior. The looking glass of maternal experience empathises with daughters, remembering girlhood by searching for the exact place where the bridge between childhood and adult life is located. Knowing the inherent perils and choices that follow in life, the artist values the bold exploration and curiosity of girlhood, the joy in the growing body. Behind the looking glass, unravelling dreams, strange animals; here are the dangers and pleasures of childhood, the internal life of girls.