Mazzoleni is pleased to announce an unprecedented new exhibition at The Lightbox gallery and museum that will bring together the work of Italian master Canaletto (1697-1768) and contemporary interdisciplinary artist Melissa McGill (b.1969).
These two renowned international artists share a profound connection and dedication to Venice, born 250 years apart. The display will feature Canaletto’s highly detailed depictions of both Italy and England alongside Melissa McGill’s major independent public art project Red Regatta presented in Venice in collaboration with Associazione Vela al Terzo Venezia in 2019, co-organised by Magazzino Italian Art, curated by Chiara Spangaro with project manager Marcella Ferrari and with support from Mazzoleni.
The Lightbox is featuring these two artists’ reflective relationship with Venice and its unique qualities, sights, sounds, traditions and individuality. The exhibition will combine 20 paintings, prints and drawings by Canaletto and 16 works from Melissa McGill’s highly acclaimed Venice-based public art project Red Regatta. It will feature a documentary film, hand-painted photographic artist renderings, sound work, a glass installation and watercolours.
Whereas Canaletto is famed for his scenes that combine real and imagined spaces, and was collected by eighteenth century aristocrats, McGill is recognised through her ambitiously staged collaborative art projects that address environmental issues and are designed to spur real change. Red Regatta celebrates the city’s maritime history and calls attention to the forces of climate change and mass tourism that threaten its future. The body of work on view were created during different phases of Red Regatta‘s timeline, as McGill considered the delicate and liminal relationship between Venice’s built and natural environments, between land and sea and between humanity and nature. Both artists engage intimately with the landscape of Venice, seemingly unchanged over hundreds of years, yet their distinctly different perspectives inspire new conversations about the city’s past, present and future.
Press Release
Canaletto and Melissa McGill: Performance and Panorama
16 July – 13 November 2022
The Lightbox, Chobham Road Woking, Surrey, GU21 4AA
Opening hours: Tue – Sun: 10.30am – 5pm
Website: www.thelightbox.org.uk