EMMA MCMILLAN | HARUSPEX

Before Christianity became the dominant religion of Rome, among the many pagan rituals that governed that time was haruspicy, a form of divination that sought answers in the entrails of sacrificed animals. The diviner, or haruspex, would foretell the future and commune with the gods by reading details encoded in the organs of the dead. In Emma’s work, the augury of these paintings is not divination per se, but rather a meditation on visions, an entry point into foreign worlds. Reveries of divinatory quality are echoed in technique, with stochastic mark making following a seemingly random push and pull like the promptings of a ouija board. Brush strokes act out the gamble of a dice roll, a rhythm eventually revealing patterns in seeing, a consultation opening up pathways. In this convolution, crevices fold in on themselves and umbrella-expand again into greater space. What begins as intimate becomes the outside. A gesture feels lurid, a detail totemic. Further divination is given from the colors themselves, hazy like the murkiness of sight falling into slumber. These colors are of a sleepy earth, eliciting memories of moments pre-dawn and post sunset, the decadent feeling of wine red and lavender smoke. – Extract from Press Release by Sven Loven