The Labours of Herakles


Small exhibition at the Queen’s House in Greenwich of lithographs by Marian Maguire.

Maguire is an artist from New Zealand who questions her country’s past using characters from classical antiquity, in this case using the story of Herakles but casting him as a colonist of New Zealand. There are seven works from a series of twelve on show.

I’m not sure I’d have got the colonialism idea without the commentary but I thought these were fun works combining Greek and Maori images.  My favourite was the one shown here of the hero undertaking activities familiar to early colonist such as charting the landscape and introducing new plants. 

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