Artists: Simon Periton - Erika Trotzig - Jason Shulman - Tess Tomassini - Sienna Murdoch - Chantal Goulder

Ashley Saville presents La Belle et la Bête, the first group exhibition at 193 Fleet Street. The exhibition takes its title from Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve’s fairytale of the same name, a text that has bewitched artists, musicians, and filmmakers since its anonymous publication in 1740.

A young woman is trapped in an enchanted castle with a beastly creature. At first she loathes him, but eventually her heart softens. Her declaration of true love breaks the Beast’s curse: he transforms into a handsome prince, and they live happily ever after.

Though rooted in a moralising literary tradition, La Belle et la Bête resists simple binaries of good and evil. Desire and abjection, duty and transgression, ideals and outsiders are not fundamental oppositions; rather, they are intricately imbricated aspects of life and love. Such ambivalence makes for a particularly interesting fairytale, offering rich ground for interpretation.

This exhibition uses the fairytale as a lens through which to consider these ideas. Five artists have been invited to respond to this broad line of inquiry however they wish. The exhibition is accompanied by a new essay by Philippa Snow.