Tales From The Greek

Five years in the making and an odyssey in its creation, artist Marco Luccio presents Tales from The Greek art exhibition and book launch at fortyfivedownstairs, 9 November - 4 December 2021.

This exhibition will be one of the biggest in scale and ambition in over thirty years of Luccio’s international art career. It features large canvasses, found objects, drypoints, etchings, charcoal drawings, collagraphs, ink, mixed media, pencil and monotypes.

Tales from The Greek will also feature a collaboration between Luccio and award-winning author John Hughes (Who was shortlisted for the 2020 Miles Franklin Literary Award for his novel, No One After).

After their 2013 critically acclaimed collaboration, The Garden of Sorrows, the pair have come together again for this stunning collection of eight narrative adaptations of Greek myths and tragedies.

Hughes incorporates versions of Sophocles’ Philoctetes, a classic triangle of trust and deceit, and Antigone, which reverses time’s arrow so that the protagonist’s life unfolds like a film running in reverse to explore the paradoxical implications of living in a family that has been cursed, as well as Aeschylus’ Oresteia, Euripides’ Hecuba, and evocative new renderings of Daedalus and Icarus, Sisyphus, and Achilles.

In response to the stories, Luccio’s series of artworks are both dramatic and gritty. Using a variety of mediums, he has been able to produce a collection of works that help bring the text to life in a rich and distinguished way. The stories require no prior knowledge of the myths on which they are based, but will appeal to readers who know and enjoy Greek myth and take pleasure in seeing how these timeless stories can be recast and reshaped into creative new forms.