Artist: Marie Harnett

To attend the artist talk on Friday 6 June, please email events@cristearoberts.com.

“What could she say, but that too well he lov’d?”
Ovid, Orpheus, Metamorphoses

Cristea Roberts Gallery presents an exhibition of new drawings by Marie Harnett (b.1983). Were you dreaming?, the artist’s fourth solo show with the gallery, brings together twenty-five intricate works on paper depicting tender, decadent and dream-like scenes inspired by contemporary film, Greek mythology and Old Master paintings.

Best-known for pencil drawings that are hyper realistic in style, the artist’s practice always begins with film stills sourced from a diverse range of trailers. Films are a conduit for the artist, who sifts through hundreds of trailers, intuitively selecting certain frames that encapsulate a particular atmosphere.

Through this process, Harnett establishes a series of fragmented scenes that allude to classical myth and tragedy; the artist was particularly inspired by the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, lovers separated by death. Although Orpheus persuades Hades, God of the Dead, to allow him to take Eurydice back to the world of the living, he inevitably breaks the terms of their agreement, stealing a final, forbidden glance at Eurydice, causing her to return to the underworld forever.

Harnett’s tableaux of drawings collectively inhabit the same world, forming part of a new narrative, a realm that is not quite our own; a woman is framed in a window, a coin held between her fingers; a man holds the head of a broken statue in his hands; the façade of a building is concealed by thick foliage.

The artist commits these unexpected scenes to paper, imbuing her drawings with drama and suspense. As a result, visitors to the exhibition, become active protagonists, joining into the act of observing and being observed.

Harnett pairs the ancient with the modern, creating what she describes as an “other world, an underworld, a mirror world, that is frozen in time.”

Harnett’s use of graphite collaging in her drawings produces images that are surreal and uncanny; characters from period films are blended and recontextualised with backgrounds sourced from mythological paintings. In for you alone, 2024, a man in modern dress is transposed into the landscape of Orpheus, 1628, by Roelandt Savery.

Drawing inspiration from Baroque and Renaissance sculptors, such as Bernini and Michelangelo, several of the artist’s works, including Half agony, half hope, 2024, depict marble statues that appear in film. Interested by how stone sculptures depict subjects that are seemingly suspended in time, Harnett experiments with the medium of pencil to create the same illusion.

Harnett also presents several drawings that take the form of photographs; in Love has an earlier death, and You’ve cast a spell, 2024, a jelly-like trifle is shown in both positive and negative versions. In these drawings, Harnett experiments with transformation; a film still of a particular object is turned into a photographic negative which, in turn, is made into a drawing. Through this method, Harnett intends to highlight the sculptural quality of drawing, to establish distorted parallels in shades of light and dark.

Harnett’s titles are selected from the audio of the trailers she watches. Through this pairing of image and word Harnett creates a new staging and cast of characters, all connected to pervading themes of loss, love, yearning and grief.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a publication featuring an interview with the artist.

Marie Harnett: Were you dreaming? takes place during the 2025 edition of London Gallery Weekend (5 - 8 June 2025), when the artist will be giving a public talk and the show will be open for extended hours.