Pippy Houldsworth Gallery is pleased to present London-based artist Liorah Tchiprout’s first solo exhibition with the gallery, I love the flames, but not the embers, from 30 August to 28 September 2024.
In new paintings, Tchiprout presents moments of intimacy and community, staging hand-made dolls in a world that is self-referential and protected. Her dolls are modelled after herself and her peers, female protagonists from Yiddish literature, and historical figures including the Jewish dancer Els Keezer. In painting figures that are activated by their expressions and likenesses, though lifeless in their slack physique, Tchiprout muddies the boundary between imaginary and real, animate and inanimate. However, despite her depiction of gentle touches, sisterhood, care, and communion – experiences drawn from her Jewish upbringing – Tchiprout’s dolls are not entirely immune to our challenging reality. Cast in deeply psychological spaces, drawing on emotions of longing or exclusion, Tchiprout’s paintings address what the artist views as an intrinsically Jewish tradition of finding joy within pain, and catharsis through connection and memory.
Having established her career in printmaking, Tchiprout paints the different textures and materials of her dolls – modelling clay, human hair, vintage fabric and wood – with direct and graphic brushstrokes. She builds warm-toned layers of oil paint with the same logic as a monotype. In I know where I stand with the skylarks, Tchiprout’s palette is at its most vibrant, with vert olives, bismuth and lemon yellows casting a bilious glow reminiscent of early 20th century German Expressionism. Influenced by the intensity of artists including Kathë Kollowitz and Paula Modersohn-Becker, Tchiprout’s thick, decisive line-making and bold, non-naturalistic colour invite a tension within the dreamy, quiet realm that her subjects inhabit. Though the painting’s title, a reference to English poet Christina Rossetti’s 1864 poem Twice, has associations with longing and romance, the artist counterbalances the intimacy and comfort of the scene with foreboding veils of dark brushstrokes. Tchiprout’s central figure casts a nervous glance sideways, wary of an unseen disturbance, or even the presence of the viewer. The comfortable stillness between the sitters is threatened, implying an awareness of the fragility of their world.
As she arranges her dolls in tableaux, often recasting objects and props from her home and studio, Tchiprout’s compositions are inherently theatrical and performative. In He made us and we are his, Tchiprout’s dolls act out the traditionally gendered tropes of Pre-Raphaelite lovers: the knight protecting the princess. The doll dressed in black wears a Tallit, a prayer shawl typically worn by Jewish men, and she consoles a figure in demure clothing reminiscent of Tznius fashion favored by orthodox women. When Tchiprout tests gender binaries through these theatrical, canonical poses, she places an emphasis on the generative intimacy of female friendship, particularly the admiration and tenderness between the Jewish women she grew up alongside. Tchiprout’s protagonists weather their hardships in a collective spirit, conduits of emotion that range from volatile yearning to the quiet assurance of holding hands.
Liorah Tchiprout (b. 1992, London) lives and works in London. She received her MA from Camberwell College of Art, London (2020), and earned her BA in Fine Art Printmaking at University of Brighton (2016). Solo exhibitions include Two Eyes Wide Open at the Edge of Dawn, Marlborough, London (2023); All Things are Kneeling, Brocket Gallery, London (2022); and Frontier at the Country of Night, Oxmarket Contemporary, Chichester (2022). Recent group exhibitions includeThe Darling of Reflection, Sid Motion Gallery, London (2024); Summer Exhibition, Royal Academy of Arts, London (2023), for which Tchiprout won the The Sunny Dupree Family Award for a Woman Artist; Face to Face: A Celebration of Portraiture, Marlborough, London (2023); Painted Prints, trio show with Jimmy Merris and Gillian Ayres, Marlborough, London (2023); New Contemporaries, South London Gallery, London (2021); and The Ingram Prize Exhibition, Unit 1 Gallery, London (2021), amongst others. She was shortlisted for the Ruth Borchard Self Portrait Prize (2023; 2020), selected for the Bloomberg New Contemporaries (2021), and shortlisted for the The Ingram Prize (2021). Her work is included in the Government Art Collection, London; Ruth Borchard Next Generation Collection, London; Soho House Collection, Tel Aviv & London; Rachofsky Collection, Dallas, TX; and Clifford Chance Collection, London.
