Louise Cherry | “All that’s left of you in me, my child you are not seen”

All that’s left of you in me – my child, you are not seen
Enter the magical world of this exciting new work by Wicklow artist Louise Cherry. Her
imaginative approach to the conventions of life drawing and the codes of visual representation
have allowed her to create a brave, challenging and intriguing collection of vibrant, imaginary
narratives. The juxtaposition of the nude form within her fantastical worlds force the viewer to
question the representation of the nude within art, within contemporary culture and within the
hidden yet readily available cyber world impacting our lives and the lives of our children.

Cherry’s nudes, without detail, deliberately featureless, anonymous, and an almost androgynous visual of the naked body, challenge the viewers gaze and interest. The floating naked figures, juxtaposed to their surroundings force the viewer to question the purpose of nudes within the narrative and ask why are there at all. Cherry has placed the anonymous nude within abstract explosions of colour, to symbolise anonymity, secrecy and chaos within the unseen and unsupervised ersatz cyber world our children live in. Text, referencing both children’s fairy tales and cyber porn code, allow humour infiltrate this otherwise serious topic.
Through visual pleasure combined with visual confusion, Cherry challenges her viewer to enter her fantastical world and explore some of these concepts with her.

“I began by researching my late father’s life drawings, his abstract paintings and his books from
Rubens and Rodin but my process took me on a visual adventure and these fantasy images are
the result. It is not the project I expected..……and that really excites me. My process became
increasingly influenced by listening to the experiences of my teenage children and their friends,
growing up in a digital cyber culture where nothing is controlled or monitored. Where explicit
sexual images are constantly at their fingertips by simply swiping a screen. Hidden from view,
generations of children are now growing up seeing explicit images they are too young for
without any restrictions. These issues have hugely influenced this work”