We are delighted to announce the first exhibition in London of the Düsseldorf based artist Lucy Harvey.

Commenced in 1997, Guide To Life is a constantly expanding reference work in which the information necessary for a successful life is collected and catalogued. It is both a work in its own right as well as the containing structure for every other work.   Guide To Life is organized under five chapter headings. I Basic Philosophy ; II Necessary Knowledge ; III Productive Living ; IV Autobiography ; V Beauty . The works in the current exhibition come principally from chapters IV and V .

My Studio (2003) Guide To Life IV(C).3: Autobiography (Inventing Reality) consists of six exquisite drawings in which the artist's studio, a construction so real in her mind and yet perhaps a little way from the physical reality in which Harvey works, is constructed in perspectival perfection. Sections of the drawings are circled and focused upon just as the mind hones in on the detailed pleasures of a discovered idea.

64 Variations on El Lissitzky's Proun G7 (2002) Guide To Life V(A).4: Beauty (Analysis) takes as its starting point a postcard of a painting by El Lissitzky in the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf. Harvey remakes the image 63 times, painstakingly reconstructing and collaging the elements of the original in a search for an understanding of the ideals and ambitions that made it and that can be reborn in its recreation.

Die Walküre (first act) (2003) Guide To Life V(B).4: Beauty (A Collection). One of a series of works in which the artist gives deadpan performances of musical works of great intensity.   Harvey sings her way through the whole of Act I of Wagner's opera, alone in her kitchen, unaccompanied. A tour de force but completely vulnerable - almost comic in the sincerity of its endeavour. Once again, this painstaking exploration is an attempt to make sense, of the beauty of the work, of its meaning to us, of a life lived through experience.  

Lucy Harvey was born in 1967 in Nantwich, England and lives and works in Düsseldorf. She studied at the Auckland School of Art, New Zealand and the Kunstakademie, Düsseldorf (1996-2000). In 1996 she was awarded a DAAD fellowship and she has since exhibited in Germany, New Zealand, USA, Scotland and France.