Books, Reviews & Catalogues

 
Iavor Lubimorov introduction to Firebird 
at Platforms Project Athens with Cable Depot 2022
 

Rance has a history of creating wearable art and using performers

to activate creatures which emerge from a mythological subconscious

and speak to us through form, movement and sound of an ancient

past and of the present plight of the earth. Recalling a forgotten

primitive state, Rance’s work is a visceral reminder that we are of

nature and not separate, that we need to care for the environment

we live in by identifying ourselves as a part of it and the sheer mystery

and awe of life – our own and that of all other living creatures which

inhabit the waters, the earth and the sky.

Victoria Rance Firebird 2022 video still

 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Natasha Moody text for Creek Dreams 
Seager Gallery 2022
 

Rance encourages viewers to understand the entanglement

of river wildlife and humans through a series of works featuring

her animated alter ego Fisherdottir who has been swallowed by

a great grey heron. Rance’s other talismanic works on show at

Seager Gallery use the mythic tropes of transformation, human

and animal companionship and magic to encourage feelings

of connection and responsibility for the other beings that exist

within our immediate entangled ecosystems.

 

Victoria Rance As Grey Heron 2015-2022 digital image




 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Iavor Lubimorov introduction to In Real Life 
at Cable Depot 2021
 
What unites the experience of either visiting locally in person, or 
viewing live online from the other side of our planet, is a dreamy 
and dislocated sense of the boundaries between film, objects, space, 
time and location. Definitions are blurred, and scale disrupted, so 
that visitors online or in real life, objects, sculptures and characters 
seem to inhabit each other’s dreams (in some past, or possibly 
future place, but also here and now). 
 
The overall sense in the end is not so much a play on scale and time, 
as an absence of both.  A place, in the artist’s words, as big as 
‘the size of our imaginations’.
 
 
River Mercury 2012-22 installation at Cable Depot

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Alexandra Kokoli Introductory text for Sleepy Heads 
Blyth Gallery Imperial College 2019
 

In Thorness Sleeps, Victoria Rance creates a universe of myth

and magic in the shape of a small installation, in which a female,

earthlier manifestation of Thor, Thorness, a tiny black creature

covered in briar thorns, is guarded by a motley crew of imaginary

entities, organic matter (including a dead spider), and talismans.

Rance challenges divisions between human and animal, science

and magic, and strives to restore the land to its ‘lost creatures 

& local spirits’.  We will all sleep better if she succeeds.

 

Victoria Rance Thorness 2019

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Stephanie Moran text for Archipelago at 
Walthamstow Wetlands 2018

Victoria Rance unearths mythologies of the environment: 

she imagines the insect souls of mayflies, mosquitoes and midges, 

and their reincarnation, and explores the magical worlds of fishermen 

and herons. She researches, reimagines and dreams backstories and 

histories of the landscape’s inhabitants, channeling its myth-forms 

and connections to Celtic otherworlds. 

 

Victoria Rance Midges and the isle of gods 2019 installation   

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Anna McNay Introduction to catalogue
The Night Horse and The Holy Baboon 2017

Much of Rance’s work deals with archetypes and the wearing of masks, 
exploring what Jung describes as the compromise between what one
likes to be and how one likes to appear – the persona as it stands
in contrast to the personality. Her cast of recurring characters, 
besides Loki and his friends, includes Medusa, Perseus, Nuit (the 
goddess of the sky), and, most recently, the Night Horse and the 
Holy Baboon. Her Sculptures to Wear include caterpillars, a worm, 
and wasp spiders – a striking variety of arachnid that disguises itself 
as a more harmful species to evade a common predator.

This theme of (self-)protection and vulnerability permeates Rance’s 
practice, and if one archetype can be said to lie at the heart of her 
work, it is the Mother, whose attributes Jung describes as ‘maternal 
solicitude and sympathy; the magic authority of the female; the 
wisdom and spiritual exaltation that transcend reason’. On the 
negative side, the Mother may connote: ‘anything secret, hidden,
dark; the abyss, the world of the dead, anything that devours, 
seduces, and poisons, that is terrifying and inescapable like fate’.  
Together he formulates the ambivalence of these attributes as 
the loving and terrible mother’.

For Rance, there is always this ambivalence between good and 
bad, violence and serenity, with her characters often coming in 
opposing pairs. While her work frequently draws on the darkness 
that lies beneath, she seeks not to shock, but to mend or to help.  
Space for a Girl (2011), for example, was made as a safe space for 
her niece, while SOS (2013) was made as a form of psychological 
armour with her own daughter in mind.



From The Night Horse and The Holy Baboon
Penny Hancock interviews Victoria Rance 
after her recent exhibition in The Learned Pig 
an online magazine about art, thinking, 
nature and writing edited by Tom Jeffreys.


PH: Mythical creatures often feature in your work, as well
as real animals. I am thinking of Loki, or The Night Horse 
and the Holy Baboon, in your recent exhibition. Would 
you say there are some archetypes that speak to all of us, 
and what do you believe these represent for us?

VR: I think there are some very powerful archetypes that we 
carry within us. Horses seem to still be so important to humans. 
And even creatures we’ve never come across speak to us. 
Wolves for example. I grew up in the countryside by woods 
and was frightened of wolves and thought I heard them at 
night, even though I knew there weren’t any there. Fear is primal, 
like fear of snakes. As we mentioned earlier, I am just now 
researching hyenas and how they have been a carrier of certain 
human qualities we want to disown or make “other”.
 
Victoria Rance Four Sisters 2015


 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
From Penny Hancock reviews Victoria Rance: 
The Night Horse and The Holy Baboon 
Sculptures, Drawings, Photographs and Animations 
2007-2017 at The Cello Factory 23-30 October 2017
on a-n.co.uk reviews

The silhouettes of two giant figures, long eared, long armed
—human? —animal? —mythical? —straddle the entrance to
the gallery. They appear to have their backs to us, guarding
what lies ahead. Or are they facing us, offering us protection,
or warning, as we enter? Between the figures, a giant,
golden-haired baboon can be seen against the light. Beside it
is a wooden horse, reminiscent of a nursery toy, but enlarged
out of all proportion. It is one of the most striking entrances
to an exhibition I’ve ever seen.
Inside the baboon seems menacing, sinister, towering over the
horse. The horse, made simply of wood with its stylized, half-
closed eyes, and its naïve contours, appears vulnerable, its
head down, demurely facing the baboon. But as you approach  
The Night Horse and The Holy Baboon your perceptions are
subverted. It’s the horse that has a sinister air about it, the
baboon a protective one. Can the simplicity of the horse figure
be trusted? Can the dominating presence of the golden baboon
perhaps be interpreted as comforting, a protective giant, watching
over us?
The Night Horse and The Holy Baboon 2017

 





 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
From Thinking is Making Presence and Absence in Contemporary Sculpture
Black Dog Publishing 2013 Edited by Michael Taylor
Excerpt from text by Fiona MacDonald
Themes of shielding and protecting take centre stage in the work of Victoria Rance, and most of this refers directly to the human form. Her metal and fabric masks, helmets and armour, designed to protect from exposure to both elemental forces as well as other people are intended to be worn. The performers with whom she collaborates are significantly more than just models, and are often family members. It is often these performers' own needs, (as imagined by or explained to Rance), that trigger the work. 
On her studio wall are photographs of a spider, a beetle and a caterpillar, each one a species that disguises itself as another in order to avoid attack - impersonating a poisonous species, whilst lacking their own protective weaponry. Whole-body enclosures one can wriggle into take up the bright warning patterns of small beasts to act as a different kind of armour, protecting the vulnerable space of the psyche from the cruel or indifferent realities of life by allowing the wearer to become other than themselves.
Rance can achieve an impressive interweaving of the mystical and the commonplace, in both conception and fabrication. Her ideas often arise from interaction with children, where the barriers between real and imagined are less rigid. Many of her methods: metalwork, stitching weaving have their own counterpoint in the ancient and mythical world. In the pieces where a particular method and form coalesce, the symbiosis resonates throughout the work. 
 

Matthew Goodsmith interviews Victoria Rance for 
Occupy My Time Gallery's Tipping the Line 
March 2014 see The Wedding


From Osnabrücker Zeitung newspaper
Of Monsters and Demons (translated from the German)
6 September 2013 by Tom Billman
The Sleep of Reason   BBK Kunstquartier
It’s about demons, those ugly little monsters that lurk within us 
and sometimes forcefully push out to dominate our everyday lives:
“The Sleep of Reason” is the title of an exhibition of works by Sylvia Lüdtke and Victoria Rance, which opens this evening at BBK 
in the art district. 

It all began with Francisco de Goya, "The Sleep of Reason 
Produces Monsters" (1799) is an etching by the Spanish artist, 
in which a man falls exhausted on a table in the bedroom, 
meanwhile, bats, owls and sphinxes band together 
looming over him. Osnabrück artist Sylvia Lüdtke and her 
colleague from London Victoria Rance took this impressive 
work as a starting point for their artistic engagement 
with reason and what happens beyond Rationality. 
For one year they worked together on paintings, 
sculptures and objects specifically for this exhibition. 
They emailed ideas and suggestions, and discussed via 
Skype to realise the project. Now the Kunst-Kabinett  
of myths and dreams, and the nature of the subconscious 
in everyday life is ready for the public. Rance sat down 
to analyze figures from Norse mythology, and 
with the help of psychoanalysts such as Sigmund Freud 
and CG Jung, turned the archetypes into sculpture-like 
costumes to wear. 
VR As Loki Fasnacht 2013 still

 

















Interview between Hülya Küpçüoğlu and Victoria Rance

Published in Habertürk  Turkish Daily Newspaper 10 June 2012

 1- How did you start your  work with Medusa?

I started working on the theme of Medusa after visiting the Byzan-
tine Cisterns in Istanbul. In 2008-9 I made work about Arachne (who 
was turned into a spider by the envious Minerva) and back in 1996 
a sculpture about Danae who was the mother of Perseus, so I had 
already an interest in mythology, transformation and the human 
characteristics which the stories of the gods portray. When I 
saw the Medusa I was shocked by the physical presence of the 
huge stone head upside-down in the water, and by the massive
 (phallic) column on her head. Here she lies beneath the very 
centre of old Istanbul, and it felt symbolic to me of a civilisation 
being founded on the suppression of female power. I wanted to 
reanimate her. Work about Perseus and his weapons and powers 
came later. I wanted a contrast between the young boy and the 
older woman, and also the unarmed woman and the boy with so 
much help and so many weapons from the gods.
2- What is important in your work?
I have different interests. The symbolic and the story carried in 
the work matters very much, I am interested in psychological 
subjects which have a meaning now, but often have a long 
history. This is why my work often refers back to the past, 
past artworks, buildings, artefacts. I often visit museums and 
am interested in history, ethnology and archaeology. I also 
spend a great deal of time making things by hand, again with 
reference to traditional crafts which I feel matter very much. 
Working by hand is something so human, and is so satisfying. 
I often fight with myself about using the computer, and 
do it unwillingly. I am interested in feminism, which connects 
to both the subjects and the use of crafts and making. I care 
very much about how women are treated and worry sometimes 
that our daughters may lose the gains in freedom and equality 
we have now and which our mothers and grandmothers fought for.
3- Generally your work is black and white. Why black and white? 
Does that have any meaning?
I like the immediate power of black and white. I find it seductive 
and rich. It gives me a thrill which I can't explain. I do use colour 
in my sculpture, and use shiny reflective surfaces, but for my animations and recent images I feel happier with the 
excitement of black and white.
 4- What is you thinking about power and politics of the body? 
Also what do you think about beauty?
For me Medusa represents a powerful image for women. As I said 
above, feminism matters to me very much. I want women to be 
able to have control over their own bodies and not feel pressurised 
to be slim or beautiful, or to hide themselves or to wear 
particular clothes. I respect each woman's right to be able to make 
their own choices, and sometimes they have to angrily protect that 
right. As for beauty in art, I do want my work to have a strong 
aesthetic quality, some artworks I make are shocking or frightening, 
some are beautiful. In my animations I wanted Medusa to 
remain powerful, so I left the end of the Medusa and 
Perseus animation ambiguous. 
He had so much help from the gods to kill her; all she had was 
her angry stare! So I made her huge and powerful. A lot of 
my work deals with protection of the vulnerable and fragile, 
and how hard it is for sensitive people to exist in a world where 
you often have to be hard and cynical and mistrustful of others. 
How do we empower ourselves or look after the vulnerable? 
My ‘sculpture to wear’ series deals with ways to imagine this. 
I make sculptures like costumes and ask people to wear them and 
be photographed in them, I want to capture a vulnerability in those 
photographs and the animations which follow.
Victoria Rance Medusa 2011 animation still

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 


5533 Residency 
Space for a Woman: Walking through the city
Victoria Rance
September 11-16, 2011

The purpose of Victoria Rance’s research trip was to subjectively 
experience personal and shared spaces in the city, in particular 
she searched for ambivalence about spaces for women. 
She wanted to experience how they are negotiated and 
demarcated in comparison to those in London. Her quest began 
at the Harem in Topkapi Palace, a historical designated space 
for women that has played an important role in the western
imagination. She found the harem quieter, cooler, and more 
pleasant than the rest of the palace filled with noisy tourists. 
Similarly, in the mosques, the areas designed for women were 
sheltered from the noisy hustle and bustle of everyday life. In 
the Eminönü mosque, she witnessed children playing, chasing, 
and learning to walk in the shared prayer space. She learned 
that the demarcation of spaces is more complex than a westerner 
might suppose. 
Victoria Rance Harem 2011

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
see more 5533 website


Patrick Semple, Review of Bounty APT Gallery Deptford 2007
"In common with many of Rance's recent works there is here
a sense of both shelter and imprisonment. A wall of steel flowers 
forms a shield like a gauntlet. Their petals face inward allowing, 
no doubt, the occupant an idea of the pastoral. But if there is 
delicacy and decoration Space for a Woman is also rough, threatening 
and not a little medieval. It wraps its occupant into a corner, forces them to stand and acts like a cage.
 
Nonetheless there is beauty. And the piece is a shelter; 
it's just difficult. It may be small but it is on a human scale. 
And the occupantcan see out."
 
Victoria Rance Space for a Woman 2007

Review by Gavin Street of The Economist Plaza londonart.co.uk 2001 

"Rance's steel sculpture plays on tensions between old and new. 
Its simple geometric form is essentially modernist, yet strongly evokes a much earlier age with a sense of spirituality that is at odds with its modern environment.
Entering the sculpture's interior through a gap in the steel rods affords a rare moment of refuge, a reference to the church's role as sanctuary. Any sense of security is short lived however, as the converging struts draw our eyes upwards to accentuate the feeling of being penned in on 
all sides by the towering office buildings."

St John's Waterloo 2001
"It may seem irreligious to suggest that the line between life and death is commonly crossed over, anyway. Victoria Rance's cage with open doors is delicately wrought out of material to create an essential place within a place. It is straightforwardly necessary for sculptors to create to control a place for atmosphere. The combination of church, which already predetermines certain expectations, and Rance's transparent mausoleum is strong. The whole place is brooding anyway and yet this suggests a stillness after the event, that something has already happened.













Rance desires to bring a certain level of tenderness
back into the situation; the priest might preach this
anyway, from the pulpit, but here given references
merge with artistic production."

Ann Elliott Fe2O5 catalogue
Darlington Arts Centre 2005
APT Gallery 2006
"Victoria Rance creates apparently fragile
structures in steel.The resulting lace-like
patterns resemble decorative wraps or blankets
or fine silk veils. She works with memories
gathered from her past, reconsidered from a
current point of view. Religion, death and life
 inform sculptures that become memento mori
or reflections of an unusual free-ranging
childhood.













Attic 2004-05 is based in her recollections of
the 'Under 12's Camp Attic,' where Rance and childhood friends gathered, a secret place where older siblings were not permitted.
The sculpture is the evocation of a roof space, made from leaves purchased from the catalogue of decorative steel foliage and flowers. Rance has created a safe place, that is as much camouflage
tent or cover as it is an attic. Once assembled, the sculpture was sandblasted and sprayed successively
with hot zinc and hot copper. The resulting near terracotta colour further endows the work with the association of the roof hideaway. "

Victoria Rance The Mark Tanner
Sculpture Award
Standpoint Gallery, Hoxton 
by KM 
www.londonlostandfound.com
"A series of sculptures look like they have
something to do with places to shelter, or
protection, in the way that shells do. But
they also have an air of the residual about
them, as if what was once there has vacated
the safety of this shelter.
 
There are no literal narratives, rather,
they have an overall sense of humanity.
The absence of clear practical function
which these objects display further adds
a spirituality, or religious aspect to them
insofar as what we cannot see in terms of
practical function, we invent as metaphor and icon."
 
Victoria Rance The Tree of Forgetting




















Charles Pickstone excerpt from 
Paying Attention: The Sculpture of Victoria Rance

Charles Pickstone was the 2006 winner of the Bernard Denvir 
AICA Memorial Award for Art Critics with this article, link:
Image Journal USA 2005 (ISSN 1087-3503)
"Rance's particular talent to evoke into
almost visible form; a sort of alembic of
infinity. A work like this acts like a valley
of dry bones and almost compels the
viewer to clothe it with flesh. Whether this
"flesh" is actually narrative shape,
psychological analysis, historical association,
structural interpretation or material resonance
- all of which are perfectly possible - Rance
provides us with the phonemes of a visual
language, the minimal visual signifiers that
the viewer needs, once drawn into these works,
to participate in a language that speaks of the
richness, complexity and depth of life itself."