In League with Devils

Michael Petry

14 November – 7 December 2024

The main body of Michael Petry’s exhibition, ‘In League with Devils’, consists of bronze sculptures from the last decade supplemented by more recent works including a new series of Heaven paintings. All the works deal with historic and current belief systems.

The main piece, the large-scale installation, At the Foot of the Gods, was originally commissioned for the 1st Biënnale Oosterhout (2017, Netherlands). The work is made up of almost one hundred bronze casts of human toes that appear, at first, to have been broken off Classical Greek sculptures. Their green verdigris colour has the look of ancient sculptures recovered from the sea, yet each one is a cast from someone in the arts or an athlete and is identifiably unique. Petry continually adds to the work, as losing the nose, toe, or thumb of a sculpture is one of the most common accidental changes to the appearance of Classical works. In 2016, catering staff at the British Museum broke the thumb off the Roman sculpture known as the Townley Venus. Over a decade, almost 1,000 works of art were recorded as damaged in British museums. The imagery recalls the story of Jason and his quest for the Golden Fleece, where dragon’s teeth became Spartoi (warriors). This work asks amongst many readings, who are the gods, did they make humans, or did we make them?

Other works include the large bronze, Apollo’s Mirror, that has been patinated on one side to appear ancient, while the reverse is polished so that viewers can clearly see themselves. It is hard to imagine how different our lives are from the ancients. Back then, few people really knew what they looked like, or how they looked to others. In the ancient world, only the rich could afford to see themselves, as mirrors were expensive in themselves, and needed daily polishing, usually by enslaved people. Apollo is the god associated with the arts, light and enlightenment.

Petry’s Gifts of Apollo are solid bronze which are first silver plated then 24k gold plated. They are Olympian, as they are bronze, silver and gold in one piece. In Greek creation stories whenever a human was given a gift it was golden in actuality or conceptually, but the prize almost always led to disaster or death, as did physical and emotional relationships with the gods.

Petry has made several new bronzes for the exhibition at Vane, including Ha-Nahash (The Serpent), the Hebrew name for the serpent said to have tempted Adam and Eve, which is never called Satan in the Torah or original Old Testament versions. The solid black bronze object looks like some primaeval nematode or creature from another world whose dangerous scales might be sent flying towards the viewer at any moment. Equally as arresting is Libation to Baal, a bronze lingam, a totem to the god whose cult required the sacrifice of human babies.

The Heaven paintings are part of his series, Landscape and Gods, and are based on the religious ideas of what heaven looks like for the many differing faiths. The abodes of the gods are synonymous with all that is beautiful: heaven; jannah; nirvana. Sometimes, mortals can enter those abodes after death if they meet the entry criteria, and do not fall foul of entry prohibitions. The names of these abodes are part of our cultural inheritance, every bit as powerful as our genetic one. In English, the word ‘heaven’ can mean both the abode of the gods, and the firmament in which the sun, the moon and the stars are embedded.

‘In League with Devils’ started at The Dadian Gallery, Henry Luce III Center for the Arts & Religion, Wesley Theological Seminary Washington DC, in 2023, before touring to Parsonage Gallery, Searsport, Maine, and St Mary the Virgin Episcopal Church, New York in 2024.

“Michael Petry celebrates the ceremonial, memorialises the mythical and acknowledges, honours and explores the deeper spirits within us whom we all feel and hear yet have always found hard to name. Our gods and our devils.”
Stephen Fry

Michael Petry was born in Texas, USA, in 1960. He is an artist, author and Director of MOCA London. He co-founded the Museum of Installation, London, and is a previous Curator of the Royal Academy Schools Gallery. Petry’s Thames & Hudson books include Installation Art, Installation Art in the New Millennium: The Empire of the Senses, The Art of Not Making: The New Artist / Artisan Relationship, Nature Morte: Contemporary artists reinvigorate the Still-Life tradition, and The Word is Art. His new book, MirrorMirror: The Reflective Surface in Contemporary Art, will be published in November 2024. Many of the books are associated with touring exhibitions he has curated, such as is ‘Hidden Histories: 20th century male same sex lovers in the visual arts’ for the New Art Gallery Walsall (2004). Petry was the first Artist in Residence at Sir John Soane’s Museum and recent one man shows include ‘The Touch of the Oracle’, Palm Springs Art Museum, USA (2012), and ‘In League with Devils’, Henry Luce III Center for the Arts, Washington DC, USA (2023). Petry’s work has been shown in museums and international exhibitions including Frontiers Reimagined at the 2015 Venice Biennale.

Work from the project is included in the hardback book, In League with Devils (price £20), looking at Petry’s work from the last decade. The book includes a foreword by actor and author Stephen Fry, with essays by the Director of The Dadian Gallery, Aaron Rosen, and independent curators, Daniell Cornell, and Rick Herron. The artist will be present at the exhibition preview to sign copies of the book.