Sunday Arts Magazine

Five years in the making and an odyssey in its creation, artist Marco Luccio presents Tales from The Greek art exhibition and book launch at fortyfivedownstairs.

This exhibition will be one of the biggest in scale and ambition in over thirty years of Luccio’s international art career. It features large canvasses, found objects, drypoints, etchings, charcoal drawings, collagraphs, ink, mixed media, pencil and monotypes.

Tales from The Greek will also feature a collaboration between Luccio and award-winning author John Hughes. After their 2013 critically acclaimed collaboration, The Garden of Sorrows, the pair have come together again for this stunning collection of eight narrative adaptations of Greek myths and tragedies.

Hughes incorporates versions of Sophocles’ Philoctetes, a classic triangle of trust and deceit, and Antigone, which reverses time’s arrow so that the protagonist’s life unfolds like a film running in reverse to explore the paradoxical implications of living in a family that has been cursed, as well as Aeschylus’ Oresteia, Euripides’ Hecuba, and evocative new renderings of Daedalus and Icarus, Sisyphus, and Achilles.

In response to the stories, Luccio’s series of artworks are both dramatic and gritty. Using a variety of mediums, he has been able to produce a collection of works that help bring the text to life in a rich and distinguished way. The stories require no prior knowledge of the myths on which they are based, but will appeal to readers who know and enjoy Greek myth and take pleasure in seeing how these timeless stories can be recast and reshaped into creative new forms.

With Tales from the Greek, Luccio’s artworks are instantly confronting, causing prompt reaction and attention from the spectator. When drypoint has been the chosen medium, Luccio’s signature style has shaped his visual interpretation into sensational yet striking artworks. Further, when Luccio has employed charcoal within the artworks, they are bursting with classical and sculptural chiaroscuro allowing him to capture Hughes’ dramatic emotive content.  Beyond the tense beauty of Luccio’s artworks, the thoughtful spectator will be generously rewarded by their association to the ancient Greek myths explored by Hughes.

Hughes says, “Luccio has reached deep inside himself and found there the spirit of ancient Greece, its blood and brutality, its tragedy and pathos, its clarity and excess, its beauty and its terror. The images are at once intimate and monumental, wild and restrained, stark and teeming with life. It’s as if he’s found a visual equivalent of a riddle, a stylistic method that not only represents but also embodies the paradoxical complexities inherent in these foundational stories.”

Luccio says, “When I read the stories the first time, I knew this was going to be a monumental project. I had worked with John last on The Garden of Sorrows, which has had great critical acclaim. John’s words inspired so many ideas along the themes of love, power, war, hate, revenge, sadness and ambition, together with many other emotions and traits. I love challenging myself to create new work and am constantly seeking ways to expand my artistic ability and creative scope. My hope for these works is that they not only resonate in a traditional way, but also are seen as fresh and contemporary interpretations of Greek mythical imagery.”

Visitors will be rewarded with an artist whose latest offering expands on an ever-growing body of work that is unique, exciting and always surprising. Those who know Luccio’s work will be familiar with the gritty and expressive visceral mark-making on display, which Luccio delivers in Trojan Horse sized chunks in Tales from the Greek. However, this exhibition also provides the audience with a sensitive and beautiful melancholic array of imagery sure to move and inspire us all to reflect upon our existence and motivations. Like the stories themselves, Luccio’s work is rich in content and grand in scale.

Background
Hughes and Luccio met while Luccio was an artist in residence at Sydney Grammar in 2010. Hughes, the Head Librarian, invited Luccio to collaborate on The Garden of Sorrows after seeing his artwork. Consequently, they have collaborated again to produce the breathtaking Tales from the Greek.

Marco Luccio is an award- winning artist whose work is represented in over 40 major public collections both nationally and internationally, including the New York Public Library, the Museum of the City of New York, The Skyscraper Museum and the National Gallery of Australia. His exhibition history includes 50 major solo exhibitions, and 170 group, curated and award shows. He has also received many commissions. Luccio has also been shortlisted for many major awards, including twice for the Dobell prize, Australia’s most prestigious drawing prize, and in 2013 for the Adelaide Perry Prize for drawing.  A feature documentary about Marco Luccio is currently in production.

John Hughes is the author of seven books. His first book, The Idea of Home, won the 2005 NSW Premier’s Award for Non-Fiction, the 2006 National Biography Award, and was the National Year of Reading ‘Our Story’ winner for NSW in 2012. His second book, Someone Else: Fictional Essays, won the Adelaide 2008 Festival Award for Innovation and the 2008 Queensland Premier’s Award for Short Stories. His third book, The Remnants, was published in 2012 by UWAP, who also published The Garden of Sorrows in 2013, Asylum in 2016, and No One in 2019, which was shortlisted for the 2020 Miles Franklin Literary Award. His latest novel, The Dogs, was published by Upswell in September.