Now showing in Northern Lights is These Fragments, a powerful and thought-provoking exhibition by Liverpool-born Hub Studios & Gallery artist Vincent Lavell.
Taking inspiration from European art history, Lavell’s work explores how historical images – particularly those with ambiguous or unsettling themes – can shift in meaning when viewed through a contemporary lens. The title of the exhibition is drawn from T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land (1922), and sets the tone for an inquiry into cultural remnants, fragmented narratives, and disrupted ideals.
‘These Fragments’ Exhibition
‘These fragments I have shored against my ruins’
— T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land 1922
Lavell selects scenes from classical paintings – once celebrated as pinnacles of beauty – and reinterprets them with a sense of critical distance. Removed from their original religious or moral context, these works confront us with tensions that still resonate: shame, identity, desire, and control.
Sharing the meaning behind the exhibit, Vincent shares:
“These paintings are fragments taken from European art history. I am very interested in the way images can become detached from their original moral and social contexts and can be re-visited by contemporary viewers.
The original paintings are beautiful as objects and surfaces but now seem very alien to our modern attitudes or tastes. I have chosen to focus on scenes that are ambiguous or disturbing. The status of the original paintings as ‘Art’ often obscures these darker narratives.
As this group of paintings developed I became very interested by individual ‘types’ or characters and how they could be used as ‘players’ within a field of action. The model here is Reality TV, a sort of I Am a Celebrity Get Me out of Here; the Art History Episode or Naked Attraction, in the Garden.“
By spotlighting characters within these works – his “players” – Lavell draws a sharp line from the formal structures of Renaissance painting to today’s media landscapes. He likens the evolving compositions to Reality TV, imagining a strange crossover episode where art history meets Naked Attraction or I’m a Celebrity.
Adam and Eve, Reimagined
The exhibition features a series of smaller paintings inspired by Northern European depictions of Adam and Eve by Dürer and Cranach. Originally part of larger altarpieces, Lavell’s reinterpretations grapple with themes of gender, disguise, and societal norms.
“These images are fragments taken from Northern European paintings featuring Adam and Eve (Durer, Cranach. Circa 1500). The actual paintings (in the museum) are fragments themselves of larger altarpieces that have been broken up. My paintings make reference to gender, identity and disguise. I am very interested in the way contemporary debates sometimes invoke or challenge the past. The original paintings are about shame (Adam’s nakedness). In these paintings the apple branches have been painted in a hard edged manner bringing them forward towards the viewer. The body language and gestures have been made more ambiguous and confrontational.”
About Vincent
Vincent Lavell was born in Liverpool in 1960. He studied painting at Liverpool Polytechnic (1983-86) and at the Metropolitan University Manchester (1992-93) and has worked in a variety of educational contexts including universities, prisons and hospitals. He has exhibited his work widely and has a painting in the national collection (Williamson Art Gallery and Museum). From 1989 to 2004 Vincent worked as a freelance educator and Education Curator at Tate Liverpool. From 2012 until 2020 he was Programme Leader of the BA Fine Art course at Wirral Met College.
He currently works from his studio at Hub Studios and Gallery in Liverpool.
Lavell is also a selected artist for this year’s Liverpool Art Fair at the Liver Buildings, and the New Light Summer Exhibition at Sunny Bank Mills in Leeds.
Explore more of his work at:
🔗 www.vincentlavell.co.uk
📸 Instagram: @vincentlavell
