Permission to Look: Flora Yukhnovich and Antje Southern in conversation

This Autumn Term, the Royal Drawing School’s Online Lecture Series hosts Creative Conversations; dialogues between artists, curators and writers. The series is curated by Dr Claudia Tobin, lectures are held Wednesday evenings live on Zoom.

Flora Yukhnovich and Antje Southern will talk about their shared guilty pleasures in looking at decorative patterns and joyful colours of the Rococo and how this has brought about new technical solutions and impacted on Flora’s approach to painting. In this process and material led discussion, they will explore how looking at Sevres porcelain and making studies from Fragonard and Watteau has led to a liberation in Flora’s painterly sensibilities. They will also touch upon how experiencing the feeling of Rococo colour vibrations and smooth brushwork through the act of painting sketches has prompted Flora to explore the significance of the metaphysical space and the creamy pink palette in which the female body is positioned.

'Capriccio', Flora Yukhnovich, 2019, Oil on linen 150 x 245 cm

Installation View - 'Barcarole', Flora Yukhnovich, 2020, Victoria Miro Venice

Flora Yukhonovich studied portraiture at the Heatherly School of Fine Art before she graduated with an MA in Fine Art from City & Guilds Art School. Her work has been acquired by the Government Art Collection. Flora’s painting practice offers a contemporary response to 18th century French Rococo painting. She has recently investigated Mary Sheriff’s research on Fragonard and his contemporaries, looking at the stereotypical feminine gendering through eroticized fairy tales. Her first solo exhibition Fête Galante at Blenheim Walk Gallery, Leeds Art University was inspired by her visits to The Wallace Collection studying the works of Fragonard, Boucher, Lancret and Watteau.  At Victoria Miro, Flora presented The Venice Paintings which were conceived during a two-month residency in Venice last year where Flora was able to study Giovanni Battista Tiepolo’s frescoes first-hand. 

Antje Southern studied Art History at UCL and the Warburg Institute. She taught connoisseurship at Christie’s Education and currently runs the Contextual Studies programme at the RDS Foundation Year. Her research interests are informed by working with practising artists and focuses on drawing as a tool for understanding and articulating humanity and its histories. 

Cover image: 'If All The World Were Jell-O', Flora Yukhnovich,  2019, Oil on linen, 180 x 250 cm / Photographer: Peter Mallet

All images © Flora Yukhnovich / Courtesy of the artist