Maria Marshall

Sirens

12.10.07 - 08.11.07

In Greek mythology, the Sirens were demonic beings that lured sailors to their doom with their singing. Nowadays, the term has come to refer to anything fatally attractive.
Sirens is also the title of the show by the renowned British artist Maria Marshall, whose work stands out for its devastatingly critical approach to the complexities of childhood, innocence and the challenges of growing up. Her Greek show hinges on a core work--Sofikon Epidaurus 31.08.07—which was filmed in 35mm in Greece for Greece and which has turned out to be linked to one of the greatest ecological and national disasters to befall Greece in modern times.
Her chosen location for creating the exhibition’s central work—a historic chapel in Sofiko, just a few kilometres from the ancient theatre of Epidaurus—proved to be the scene of a natural disaster of truly stupendous proportions; a disaster whose roots lie in a collective disorientation and chronic indifference. As a result of this sad but revelatory coincidence, the artistic worth of Maria Marshall’s Sirens is overlain with a premonitory—indeed, almost prophetic--hue which verges on the parabolic.