Viewing Room Liorah Tchiprout
Visualise artworks for sale in a home setting
viewing room
Visualise artworks in a home setting
Featured Artist: LIORAH TCHIPROUT
In our new series we will introduce you to new artworks and place them in our Viewing Room.
Often it’s hard to imagine the scale or impact of a piece in your room -
How will it look outside a gallery setting with different lighting and furniture?
This feature will hopefully give you a taste of how something will look and feel in a sitting room, bedroom or office space.
Our Viewing Room series will offer works for sale, focusing on a different artist every fortnight.
A short interview will introduce you to the artist and a bit about their inspirations and practice, alongside additional close-up photographs of the artworks themselves.
We are thrilled to be bringing the works to you in this way, and hope it sparks a bit of inspiration and possibly a new look to your own home!
Liorah Tchiprout
We are very pleased to welcome Liorah into our Viewing Room.
When we first opened the gallery in Hove, Liorah worked with us as a gallery assistant while she was studying at Brighton. We have followed her career since graduating and are delighted to see her growing reputation. Complex and engaging her work draws the viewer in and involves them in the narrative.
It is always a particular treat to introduce someone early in their career to the gallery.
Featured artworks
A chat with Liorah in the studio
CAN YOU TELL US A LITTLE BIT ABOUT YOUR BACKGROUND AND HOW YOU CAME TO BE AN ARTIST?
I think I’ve always been an artist as I’ve always been obsessed with drawing and looking at pictures. I'm a big reader but I was always moved by how pictures can be conduits for ideas but didn't need to be coherent like novels are. It was also the first time I ever felt like I was good at something, but never good enough, which is the balance that I feel sustains artists throughout their life. I studied Fine Art Printmaking at University of Brighton with a semester in Bezalel, Jerusalem and an MA in Print at Camberwell where I graduated last year. I was sensibly attempting to build a concurrent career as an editioning printer of etchings. This was thwarted by the pandemic, though it has allowed me to focus on my work completely which is a dream come true.
WHAT OTHER ARTISTS HAVE INSPIRED AND INFLUENCED YOU THROUGHOUT YOUR CAREER.
An art teacher in school introduced me to the work of Jewish artists such as RB Kitaj, Charlotte Salomon and Leon Kossoff, who continue to inform my work. I’m very obsessed with Leon Spilliaert, Ensor, John Singer Sargent and Daumier. I am fascinated with other women artists who build worlds within their work – Ana Maria Pacheco, Paula Rego, and Marcelle Hanselaar are great examples of this. Also contemporaries such as Nettle Grellier, Georg Wilson and Nour El Saleh.
YOUR WORKING METHOD IS PARTICULARLY UNUSUAL (AND FASCINATING) TELL US A LITTLE ABOUT THE PUPPETS AND YOUR WORKING METHODS IN GENERAL
I’ve always been fairly fascinated by puppets and dolls. During my degree I took a module about puppets. I discovered the Modicut theatre of 1920s Yiddish New York. They took puppets, traditionally a gentile medium, and infused them with folk tales and political satire. I fell in love with the images of these puppets and started making my own.
As an artist driven by drawing from observation, I like the way that working from puppets I’ve made is simultaneously drawing from my head and drawing from life. I make new additions every few years, using wood, clay, fabric and human hair (normally my own). They are mostly of women and non gender specific, but there are some men (baddies mostly) too. They are portraits of friends, people I've seen on the street, characters from disney movies, flights of fancy and Issac Bashevis Singer novels. I use the same puppets over and over, they become a part of a pseudo-pantheon from which to draw images and to explore lifes big ideas. I don't view them as pieces of work in and of themselves, but as tools for paintings and work on paper.
I tend to pick out a few puppets in the morning to play with that day, I pose them in my studio with lights and work directly from observation as if I'm at life drawing. I do still draw from (real) life as this feeds into my work, but I tend to approach my work with the same methodology. I make similar pictures over and over, which might seem like going in circles but each day it moves incrementally forward each day, too…..
AT THE MOMENT YOU ARE PROBABLY BETTER KNOWN AS A PRINTMAKER - HOW DO YOU DIVIDE YOUR TIME BETWEEN PRINTMAKING, DRAWING AND PAINTING?
I’m trying to move between the mediums simultaneously, letting each inform the other. I clung a bit too heavily to print processes in the past and I'm trying to let go of that. I feel like monotype sits between painting and print, which is a comfortable compromise for me. I make these in my studio in Kings Cross on my own little press alongside painting and drawing. For etchings I print at Artichoke Print Workshop in Brixton.
HOW HAVE YOU GOT THROUGH LOCKDOWN, HAVE YOU FOUND IT A CREATIVE TIME OR NOT AND WHAT ARE YOU MOST LOOKING FORWARD TO WHEN IT IS ALL OVER?
Lockdown has been great for me because I’ve been able to carry on my work pretty much unhindered, supported by #artistsupportpledge. Its forced me to rely less on print process and more on drawing and painting, which was a kick I really needed. I was incredibly limited by scale at the start, but i've since moved into a large life/work space in central London, so I’m incrementally getting bigger in scale. I’m most looking forward to the Tate opening again (I know right, what a loser!). And of course I miss dancing too, and my family.
WHO WOULD YOU HANG ON YOUR WALL ( MONEY NO OBJECT)….. AND WHY?
A Marcelle Hanselaar painting or even an etching would be a dream for me.
Previously featured artists:
Kirsty Wither
In the Viewing Room
Kate Burns
In the Viewing Room
David Storey
In the Viewing Room