My Meeting with Asterodia

Two hours into drifting around a temporary exhibition in Cheltenham, I stopped in my tracks fully. Asterodia, by Rachel Richards, bound my feet in place. 200 or so expressionist oil landscapes had lost my focus, but Asterodia sat directly facing the passerby. Glowing. Normally when people say that a smile glowed they mean that someone had nice eyes. This piece glows in such that the wall around it was yellowed from reflections of gold; and it feels likely my skin was also lit yellow from the strong lighting of the venue reflecting off each shard of exposed gold leaf.

In its Cheltenham setting, the piece was akin to a lit olympic torch in a museum full of worn out athletes shoes, authentic racecourse mud samples and a chunk of a kayak paddle used by a bronze medallist.

Before absorbing anything of Asterodia herself, Richard’s total mastery of palette and tone steals the limelight. Every brown, every cream and every blue sits next to the other tones with the same naturalness that a mother sits with her child. The lavish golden frame looks as though it had been invented to pair with this work. The duet of the frame and the piece was so subtle, so fundamentally correct, that I did not even realise it. It was so right that in the moment I didn’t stop to think about how seamlessly the piece and frame merged.

Asterodia - By Rachel Richards

Not until I had the misfortune of visiting the artist’s website.

I hate The Website

On it, pictures of her original works are laid out in a grid. Asterodias sits nude on a white background, totally defrocked without a frame. Furthermore, the image below was provided, to show what she would look like in a modern room, with a black frame. I began to question if I had been hallucinating in the exhibition; as was the extremity of loss in appeal.

The image I share next is one of betrayal, I feel like the woman I stared at in the gallery has been gutted. I would like to sincerely apologise to Rachel if she ever encounters this review, but I do hate your website as viscerally as I love your art.

Asterodia (Unframed) - By Rachel Richards

The Beautiful Nymph

At a metre by a metre, Asterodia’s bare shoulders sat at a similar height and size to mine while on that gallery wall. The way these shoulders melt into the background, combined with the great gash of missing neck and collar, suggest she is being ripped away. Or decaying into the canvas. However, the serenity of the face makes you question if she is simply at one with the background, fused to the rose bush that covers her. Alternatively, she is a figure of acceptance, peace, and serenity in the face of being consumed.

Asterodia does not fall short of a nymph’s beauty. Whether she’s a woman of nature, a woman decaying or a woman ensnared by thorns; is all at the mercy of the viewing eye. Growing up going between Bristol and Saudi Arabia, Richard’s choice to wrap the branches up around the head may well be a reference to the hijab, or to the repression of women’s freedom in Saudi Arabia. The website is keen to say her works hold middle eastern influences, both in the opulence and decay, but fall short of suggesting anything political.

Asterodia’s secret I have yet to let on is that she has 4 sisters. The four other oceanids Telesto, Plouto, Rhapso and camarina all share asterodia’s rose thorns, the exquisite palette and entrancing glow. If you wish to just stand in front of one and let the glow consume you, you will be satiated. Certainly there is no need to have any thoughts to thoroughly enjoy all 4. Each plays with decay and texture slightly differently, but all are serene, all eyes hidden and all ensnared.

The oceanid nymphs they share their names with are notably free-moving; juxtaposing Prometheus in their presence in the ancient Greek tragedy ‘Prometheus bound’. The mythological names here are not existent to be pretentious, but properly suit the uncertain balance of serenity and restraints in the pieces.

Richards has also produced other portraits, relevant here.

Aaliyah

Aaliyah, a name derived from the Arabic to rise or ascend, is not a nymph. She has no thorns. Her glow is disrupted by large iris’ staring down the viewer. Aaliyah too is wronged by a depiction in a black frame in a modern apartment. I may never get to see her duet with her golden frame. Her roses, replaced with cloth headwear. Her thorns on the face, replaced with draped gold jewellery.

Aaliyah - Rachel Richards

Aaliyah (Unframed) - Rachel Richards

Is her headdress her own cage of thorns? I can’t tell if Aaliyah and Richard’s other Arabian pieces are meant to be the true point, the nymphs just the set up, or just memories of faces she saw many years ago. Is Aaliyah ascending above the feminine allure of the bare shouldered nymph, is she ready to rise up against her thorns, is she just Aaliyah? It is only right for me to leave this at the discretion of you. Take your time to look at Rachel’s portrait series overflowing with technical excellency, and find what you wish to find.

What I found when taking my time with her works… was a reminder of the eerie connectedness of the world. Viewing hundreds of works on the opposite side of the country to my university, I found one thing that spoke to me. That was the work of Rachel Richards; an artist who got her art degree from the very university I attend.

The UEA Library - Photo taken personally

The brutalist works of the UEA University Campus could not resonate less with Rachel’s nymphs even if every slab of concrete were doused in gold leaf; but here she learned her trade. 30 years ago she shared the views I see today.