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In an attempt to transpose the gender inequality that continues to persist in the art world, Four You Gallery exclusively showcases the work of female artists. Today the organizers invite us to an exhibition of paintings entitled ‘The Triumph of Life’ by the London-based artist Dannielle Hodson. Inspired by Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s apocalyptic masterpiece ‘The Triumph of Death’ (c.1562), in which a hoard of skeletons rampage across a devastated landscape, the title of the show might be understood as an affirmation of human resilience and adaptability in the face of individual and collective trauma, not least the fallout of the ongoing global pandemic. Charged with an urgent organic energy, the motifs in Hodson’s canvases – characteristically, a teeming, often grotesquely comic mass of faces and limbs – feel always on the point of transformation. Unwilling to be trapped in the dead zone of stable, ‘logical’ depiction, they mutate to survive.

Dannielle Hodson (born 1980, lives and works in London) was educated at Central St. Martins, London (BA Womenswear Fashion Design, MA Fine Art) and is a graduate of the Turps Banana studio painting programme. Her work has been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions at galleries and public institutions including: Dannielle Hodson: Another Kind of Life’, Four You Gallery (2021); ‘Miniscule Venice’, satellite programme 58th Venice Biennale (2019, in association with Cross Lane Projects); ‘An Art School’, Tate Exchange at Tate Modern (2017), and the National Open Art Competition 2016, Mercer’s Hall, London, where she won the Roy Pace Award. She is a Trustee of the contemporary art charity Outside In.