Vanel

Artist Jessica Warboys is one of a younger generation of abstract painters interested in investigating process. In 2011 she discovered the archives, including photographs, of dancer Hélène Vanel, chiefly remembered for her performance at the opening of the International Surrealist Exhibition in 1938. The artist here pays tribute to her in Vanel, a canvas coated in photosensitive emulsion on which she threw sand whose shadow made a V, alluding both to the dancer’s name and to the angularity of her dance.