August 2 - August 30, 2025
installation view - front gallery
installation view - front gallery
installation view - front gallery
installation view - front gallery
installation view - front gallery
installation view - front gallery
installation view - front gallery
installation view - back gallery
installation view - back gallery
installation view - back gallery
Marie Le Lievre pours paint, pooling layers of colour with a forensic attention to detail. Sometimes other mediums are added, tipped and trickled into these established pools. The effects can be lichen-like and otherworldly. These are the Tomes in her paintings, often referenced in their titles. But there are also Notes. These are hand-drawn lines in charcoal applied with energy and vigour. They proffer moments of aesthetic agitation in contrast to the quiet skins of colour.
So, in the big painting Tomes Notes (Packed) – that’s the exhibition title in brackets – we stand before both Tomes and Notes. We bear witness to a composition that is pretty packed. There is darkness and there is light. Colour bleeds out from mass. And within the darkness there is chroma – purples (always), a beautiful rose pink, orange and green.
Halcyon Notes (Packed) is lighter in palette, but similarly broad-shouldered or weighted in composition. Areas of varied blue and an olive-green butt up against one another. There is a sense of compression, of pressure perhaps, and both Notes are party to this. I’ve said before, but it is worth adding again, that Le Lievre’s abstract paintings can be read as psychological portraits, as much as they are essays in surface, colour and composition.
Along the big centre wall is an exquisite suite of works on paper. Layered with more oil and colour than Le Lievre’s paperwork previously, these are saved from sweetness by a variety of motifs and rhythms delicately scratched into their rich surfaces.
Then in the back gallery, hung audaciously low, is a frieze of unstretched canvases. In terms of pedigree, these works pivot both forwards and back. Back, because their high viewpoint looks down on knives, hooks and a myriad other domestic items that recall Paraphernalia and Tray paintings that Le Lievre has made before. They are titled Vessels (Paraphernalia), therefore. But these look like new fresh works. They are busy and unashamedly cluttered, with drawn detail and plenty of patterning. They have herbal floral borders. And they bustle with the heat and energy of Europe. A short residency last year in Barcelona is making its influence felt. It is fascinating how a change of environment stimulates and grows things in time. And that a good artist's practice evolves and matures slowly with the benefit of time.
JS
Below are images of all the individual works featured in Packed.
Titles and full details of all twenty-two works are to be found in the Details of works section at the bottom of this web page.
Tomes Notes (Packed), 1800 x 1650mm
Violet Trip (House), 1400 x 1400mm
Halcyon Notes (Packed), 1400 x 1400mm
Havened (Packed), 1400 x 1400mm
Mages (Tray), 780 x 780mm framed
Metal Smokers (Paraphernalia), 760 x 760mm
Sabbath (Packed), 500 x 500mm
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Owen and Le Lievre hanging her largest work, Tomes Notes (Packed)
The artist and Owen discussing the height to hang the unstretched canvas works
2025
oil, oil pastel & charcoal on canvas
1400 x 1400mm
Exhibited in
Packed
2025
oil on canvas
1400 x 1400mm
Exhibited in
Packed
2025
oil & charcoal on canvas
1400 x 1400mm
Exhibited in
Packed
2025
oil & charcoal on canvas
1800 x 1650mm
Exhibited in
Packed
2025
oil on canvas
760 x 760mm
Exhibited in
Packed
2025
oil on card, framed
780 x 780mm
Exhibited in
Packed
2025
oil on canvas
500 x 500mm
Exhibited in
Packed
2025
oil & acrylic on archival paper
770 x 570mm
Exhibited in
Packed
2025
oil & acrylic on archival paper
770 x 570mm
Exhibited in
Packed
2025
oil & acrylic on archival paper
770 x 570mm
Exhibited in
Packed
2025
oil & acrylic on archival paper
770 x 570mm
Exhibited in
Packed
2025
oil & acrylic on archival paper
770 x 570mm
Exhibited in
Packed
2025
oil & acrylic on archival paper
770 x 570mm
Exhibited in
Packed
2025
oil & acrylic on archival paper
770 x 570mm
Exhibited in
Packed
2025
oil, acrylic & graphite on unstretched canvas
1000 x 1730mm (horizontal or vertical)
Exhibited in
Packed
2025
oil, acrylic & graphite on unstretched canvas
1000 x 1750mm (horizontal or vertical)
Exhibited in
Packed
2025
oil, acrylic & graphite on unstretched canvas
1000 x 1730mm (horizontal or vertical)
Exhibited in
Packed
2025
oil, acrylic & graphite on unstretched canvas
1000 x 1730mm (horizontal or vertical)
Exhibited in
Packed
2025
oil, acrylic & graphite on unstretched canvas
1000 x 1760mm (horizontal or vertical)
Exhibited in
Packed
2025
oil, acrylic & graphite on unstretched canvas
1010 x 1720mm (horizontal or vertical)
Exhibited in
Packed
2025
oil, acrylic & graphite on unstretched canvas
1000 x 1750mm (horizontal or vertical)
Exhibited in
Packed
2025
oil, acrylic & graphite on unstretched canvas
970 x 1790mm (horizontal or vertical)
Exhibited in
Packed