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Possibly Vera Freire's most
ambitious project to date, her engagement with the subject of the bull-fight again high-lights Vera's considerable artistic talent and her illuminating way of seeing.
Comprising of a number of her well known fired ceramics pieces, this body of work also brings together a
number of 3 dimensional works crafted out of different media and a small selection of Vera's drawings and paintings.
Here we have works that fully engage with the iconic image of the bull fight, seen through the prism of Vera's unique and engaging vision.
From the almost primordial line drawn works and fired glazed plaques that seem to stir deep inside our consciousness a long hidden or lost ancestral memory of a Cro-Magnon rock painting through to the seemingly
semi-automated fired and glazed faceless figure of the matador about to make the kill, that brings to mind Jacob Epstein's seminal work 'Rock Drill', we can see far into the complex visualization of Vera's bull fight.
Here there is little human bravery or dignity, just faceless, shapeless and emotionless forms, composed in a semi-Cubist fashion of flattened
surfaces and profiles. If there is any presence of dignity and bravery it is with the bull.
Yet even here momentary calm is soon supplanted with fear and pain as the bulls are subject to attack after attack until we have, Picasso like in presence, the enraged and screaming bull, speared for the fourth time, head and neck contorted, his distorted mouth calling to the heavens of its own demise and suffering.
To steal from Andre Breton’s lexicon, Vera Freire’s work has a 'marvelous' quality about it that is simply uplifting and life re-affirming. Her work has an inspirational quality that stems from a creative union of the conscious and the
unconscious.
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