PRESS RELEASE
Into the Enchanted Forest
A photographic installation by Lynn MacRitchie
The Gallery, Throgmorton’s Restaurant, 27a Throgmorton Street, London EC2
13 – 27 May 2005.  Monday – Friday 12 noon – 10pm.  CLOSED WEEKENDS
Press view: 12 May, 12 noon – 3pm.  Opening party: 12 May, 6.30-9.30
 
Based in the City of London for many years, artist Lynn MacRitchie has used city buildings including the Bank of England and the historic Throgmorton’s Restaurant as sets for her latest photographic installation “Into the Enchanted Forest.” 

The eight, large-scale colour photographs in golden frames take viewers on a journey of the imagination following a business man from the heart of the City of London, symbolized by the walls of the Bank of England, into the depths of a forest.  There he is confronted by the magical figure of a beautiful woman, her head crowned with a set of deer antlers. Finally, in front of the glittering golden walls of a city interior, the historic Throgmorton’s Restaurant, close to the Bank of England, the young man kneels barefoot in worship before the woman. 

The work was inspired by two paintings in the National Gallery, “Diana and Actaeon,” by Titian and the fourteenth century altarpiece the Wilton Diptych. 

“I knew that I wanted to bring my everyday experience of city life and my intuition that something ancient still underlay its grey streets together into an art work.  I knew this would make use of the symbol of the deer, which I had noticed as a motif on city gentlemen’s ties and as a decoration on city buildings.  The Wilton Diptych, which features a white deer as the emblem of King Richard 11, was the key. 

I transformed its young king into a businessman and the white deer into a beautiful young woman.  Assuming the deer’s antlers, she transforms the royal emblem into a symbol of fertility, the power to give life.  In the final pair of photographs, she wears a blue dress like the robe of the Virgin Mary in the diptych, and the man kneels before her in front of a wall of gold, the colour of money, but also the colour of glory, a glimpse of heaven on earth.   

The businessman’s ties features a stag motif and he also wears a brooch representing a stag’s head, its antlers made of gold.  These symbols signal his awareness that, even in the heart of the city, where the power of money is based, there is a higher power, that of nature, symbolized by the young woman, before whom he eventually kneels barefoot in worship.” 

Lynn MacRitchie is an artist and writer based in London.  Born in Glasgow, she studied art history at Edinburgh University and drawing and painting at Edinburgh College of Art.  As a student, she attended Joseph Beuys’ famous lectures in Edinburgh and organized the controversial Participation Art Event at Edinburgh College of Art, featuring the Artists Placement Group and David Medalla. Moving to London, she became a founder member of the Poster Film Collective and Artists for Democracy.  After gaining an MSc at University College, London, she became a writer, contributing to many art magazines including editing Performance Magazine.  As a business journalist she worked for Financial Times Business Publishing before becoming a regular contributor on contemporary art to the Financial Times newspaper.   This is her fourth solo exhibition. 

Images and information: www.enchanted-forest.co.uk