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Richard Saltoun Gallery is pleased to present One Liners, a solo exhibition dedicated to the British artist pioneer of minimal abstractionism Romany EVELEIGH (1934 - 2020), on the occasion of her participation in the 60th International Art Exhibition of the Venice Biennale. The exhibition - curated by art historian and lecturer Flavia Frigeri - is the first solo presentation in Rome in almost twenty years and spans works from the 1970s to the 2000s, including some of her most iconic series.

After meeting her future life partner, journalist and photoreporter Anna Baldazzi, and moving to Rome in 1963, Eveleigh established close relationships with members of the European feminist movement, in particular with Michèle Causse, French author and activist. In Rome, Eveleigh developed and crystallised her abstract language, which is the defining trait of her oeuvre.

In the 1960s, when Eveleigh first moved to Rome, the dense display of tabloids that she encountered on news stands made a strong impression on her. Eveleigh's knowledge of Italian was minimal at the time, suggesting how the visual component of the tabloids made a stronger impact on her then comprehension itself. Eveleigh was able to transform a limitation - such as the language barrier - into the focal point of her practice, and through abstraction she reformulated the purpose of language as a form and conduit for knowledge.

The artist's attempt to transform reading into a purely visual act can be synthesised in the Pages series -where the page is divided between dense writing and empty space. In this way, Eveleigh deprives the pages of their main function: the signs she paints cannot be deciphered by coded language, but only internalised visually.

One Liners (2017) - horizontal work composed by irregular vertical strips with slight fluctuations and intermissions - sums up how language can surrender to the anomalies of form. The same pattern can be seen in the work Untitled (1972), where two sets of uneven lines are hastily placed at opposite ends of the canvas, top and bottom. The irregularity of the line disappears in Fra le righe Between the lines, a series of works made out of strips of newspaper, cut, pasted and set into regular geometric configurations. Here too, language acts as an absent figure: it cannot be codified and hides, as the title suggests, "between the lines". These works are in constant transformation: the gradual yellowing of the newsprint constitutes a reflection on the ephemerality of time and of information itself, themes that also return in the Febo series (1982-84, 2009-10), where erratic lines are superimposed on washed-out paper.This approach recalls a faded document rescued from the past - a device employed by Eveleigh to comment on the transitory nature of information in contemporary society. In today's world, the media in all its many facets - from the printed press to social media - gives immediate access to the news, which is absorbed and processed in less than twenty-four hours, making what is new instantaneously old. Eveleigh understood this, before it became a widespread concern.

Press release courtesy Richard Saltoun Gallery.