Assholes of Ambition​

ASSHOLES OF AMBITION

by Maria Villa

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Kate Groobey is a British artist who passes her life in both Yorkshire and the south of France, but the inspiration for this show was even more distant. In 2018 the artist was awarded the Daiwa Foundation Art Prize which gave her the possibility of going to Japan, a land that she was fascinated by and the visual culture of which – as Groobey knows well – has also been echoed by modernist European culture.

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A visit to the temple of Sanjusangendo in Kyoto was the determining factor for the creation of this new series of works. It was there that Groobey saw the legendary statue of Senju Kannon, the Dea della Misericordia dalle 1000 braccia, the thousand- armed goddess: she has multiple limbs that hold symbolic instruments necessary for the protection of all her followers. The vision of this female goddess and “multitasker” moved the artist to deep, almost ancestral, thoughts about the theme of being a woman and of the need to protect oneself from others, but also from oneself. Together with the artist on this visit to the temple was her companion and muse, the writer Jina Khayyer, the protagonist of the preceding series of works, Pure Pleasure: she is the focal point of this new show.

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Assholes of ambition is an art project that is difficult to put into focus: it is a woman’s perspective of a woman which reveals to us absolutely new aspects which overflow with fascinating and, at times, undervalued aspects. More than narrative painting we could almost define them as an “epic drama” since they stage the events and adversities that the heroine, Khayyer, has to face in order to fight the two main antagonists of this story, Asshole and Stink, and not to fall into their numerous traps.

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The story is developed through works characterised by a use of strong colour with well-defined marks – almost expressionist paintings activated by the actions of Groobey herself who exhibits herself in front of them through a series of improvised sketches, bringing to life the various characters illustrated through a video performance transmitted on a vertically placed screen, as though to create a formal analogy with the paintings.

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The originality of her work can clearly be seen in the details: the features and costumes of her characters; the music she has personally composed; but also the conception of an unusual iconography that leads her to imagine these details.

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In this show of particular importance are, not only the characters, but also the tools, needed by Khayyer to defend herself. These are a series of objects, emblems of sagacity and protection, at times imagined and at others inspired by experiences actually undergone by the artist. The motif of the owl, for example, derives from a genuine experience of a Great Grey Owl, the largest species of owl in the world, which Kate Groobey and Jina Khayyer saw in the United States. Other recurrent symbols are a large pencil, arrows, lightening, the sun, the moon, the stars, hearts, and the oversized and emphasised hands that have a central role in the organisation of this epic. We are dealing with unusual defensive weapons of great value, potentially indicated by ambivalent marks that lead us to the question that, on closer view, is at the heart of the whole project: does the greatest danger come from without or within?