Liorah Tchiprout offers Frontier at the Country of Night at Chichester’s Oxmarket venue
Liorah Tchiprout: Frontier at the Country of Night is the latest exhibition at Chichester’s Oxmarket Contemporary (April 11-24).
Andrew Churchill, gallery director, said: “Liorah Tchiprout (b 1992) is an artist based in London.
“Her work explores girlhood, belonging and the theatrical. She builds physical puppet characters to construct her own pantheon from which to draw images.
“This methodology allows these characters to sit in between the real and the imagined, drawn from a reality that is constructed. Through it she builds a world which recentres the stories of women and girls – a world for them to liaise, interact and plot in.
“For her exhibition with Oxmarket Contemporary she will present Frontier at the Country of Night, made up of larger scale monotypes and supporting paintings and drawings. For the first time some of her handmade dolls that serve as models for her work will be exhibited alongside the prints, drawings and paintings.
“The title comes from the poetry of Rachel Korn (1898-1982). Referencing the old testament and her life as a Jewish woman born in Eastern Galicia
(now Ukraine), her poems are musings on sadness, childhood and hope. This is deeply connected to
Liorahs practice, steeped in rich traditions of Jewish literature.”
Liorah said: “The scale of these works are a new and exciting frontier for me. Usually working in a size that is intimate, reminiscent of family photographs or postcards, this larger scale adds a whole new element. In these monotypes my puppets
are now three quarters size of a real person, almost the size of a child. Suddenly they look back at the viewer, confronting and questioning in unexpected ways.”
Liorah was selected for Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2021. She was also shortlisted for the Signature Art Prize, Ingram Prize and Ruth Borchard Self Portrait Prize.
She studied fine art print at the University of Brighton, Bezalel School of Art and Design in Jerusalem, and Camberwell College of
Art. Her work is held in collections including Soho House in London and Tel
Aviv, Clifford Chance, Ruth Borchard Next Generation Collection and the UK Government Art Collection. She will have her first solo show in London in September with Brocket Gallery.
Liorah Tchiprout’s recent body of work takes its title: Frontier at the Country of Night, from the poem Put the word to my lips by the Yiddish writer Rachel Korn.”
John Phillips has written in the accompanying catalogue: “Today, in 2022, there is temptation to read into these lines the plight of millions who flee to those same ‘borders outlined by tears’ that shaped much of Korn’s career and life. After all, in 1941, she too was rescued from the rubble of the first bomb dropped on Lviv by the Nazi advance into Poland and Ukraine, and she too became a refugee. Much of her poetry is infused with this experience. But poetry, whatever its catalyst, isn’t journalism. Equally, Tchiprout’s new works, many of which take their titles from Korn’s poems.”