Installation images - Of Virgins

Installation view [above and below]

Michael Graf,Two drawings by Parmigianino of the Wise and Foolish Virgins for the church of the Steccata, Parma
From vas spirituel / a melisima by Marc-Antoine Charpentier (1989 – 1992)
Oil on Canvas Panel 119 x30.5cm

Kiki Smith " Virgin Mary" [left] " Virgin with Dove" both 1999

Etching, aquatint and Drypoint 22.3 x 27.5 cm each

Private Collection

Catalogue images from " Kiki Smith: A Gathering, 1980-2005"

Helen Johnson  "23 Specific References" 2012

Acrylic on linen, Silk, Copper nail, Leather

27x43cm

 Brent Harris  " Sad Madonna" 2007-2012
Coloured pencil on Paper
19.8 x 27.5cm

Rosslynd Piggott, "Closed Lily"[left]& "Open Lily" 1989
Oil on Canvas
30 x 38cm each

Justin Clemens, Presentation of sonnets.
"Three Virgins of the Annunciation"
2012

Three Virgins of the Annunciation

Justin Clemens

I

As narrative establishment, it’s weird:

You’ve been engaged to marry this old guy

Who seems OK, but, like, you know, his beard

Is pretty mangy, and he’s kinda sly;

Well, anyways, one day you’re sitting there

Alone, perhaps a plaything on the floor

Or some dull book, when this dude with cool hair

Blows out the window with a trumpet’s roar.

‘G’day,’ he says, two fingers raised, a flower,

Maybe a lily, in the other hand,

‘You’re gonna be a mother!’ A golden shower

Of spirit ripples through the room like sand

Through spiral shells, then bursts to sense as son

Et lumière — as if already done.

II

You’re sulking in your cell, when suddenly

This guy bursts in, his spiral perm on fire,

A giant lily in his hand, and he

Looks like he’s got a circlet made of wire

Stuck somehow to his head. WTF?! You think,

Who is this bozo? OMG he’s got

A strap-on of real feather wings, a pink

Cloak draped about his natty pastels, hot

Designer lamé sandals, and a smirk

Like he knows something juicy that you don’t.

You bristle at the stranger, tell the jerk

He has to leave: he says he can’t and won’t,

But that he’s got a bombshell text in store

That’ll flip out your fallopians, for sure.

III

When Zeus would change his form into a bull

Or swan or gold to fuck his paramours,

No dictate was the medium of his will — 

He’d do the job himself, with dirty paws.

But when the lonely Jewish God decides

He wants Himself to be His only Son,

He sends a proxy, who in turn confides

The happy news to His anointed One.

Inseminated through the ear, without 

Concomitant enjoyment of the act,

Our inadvertent heroine’s redoubt

Transmutes impossibility to fact

In that it’s Word alone that makes the cut —

Like spirit was a bone, and nothing but.

Installation View June 2012