Icons and Curious Charms

Edgar Modern 2012

Icons and Curious Charms

'Symbols and icons have permeated all cultures from the beginnings of all that we recognise as culture. While most often associated with organised religion, they have survived its demise as an organising force in many societies, to live on as potent reminders of spiritual power. More recently symbols and icons have steadily reinvented themselves within our embrace of mass media and networked technology. 

Heath has long been fascinated by symbolism and the territories it claims for itself, by the meanings it simultaneously offers and withholds. His new show appropriates iconic influences from the Byzantine era to the present and transmutes them into his own imagistic language, giving extant symbols evanescent new resonances and guiding us towards contemporary icons. The results assume the standing of talismans in a visual folklore, signposts giving us the freedom to look away from the prosaic and off into ineffable realities'.

Peter Carty writes on the arts and is a reviewer for the Independent and The Independent on Sunday