Fani Parali at Frieze Sculpture 2024: English Gardens, Regents Park

For Frieze Sculpture, London-based multidisciplinary artist Fani Parali presents ‘Aonyx and Drepan’ 2020; two monumental steel armatures from which performers, as hybrid creatures, 'sing' to each other across a path in Regent's Park.

Like Charon traversing the river Styx, Aonyx and Drepan represent gatekeepers guiding the viewer from one temporal zone to the next. Parali's practice is inspired by 'Deep Time', the 18th-century timescale used to plot non-anthropocentric geological events.  In this ecologically destructive era, the work is a portal by which to view the vastness of geological time and think of ourselves as guardians of this, our own, brief epoch. 

 

Performances of Parali’s piece will be taking place throughout Frieze Sculpture, and are open to all on the following dates:

 

• Sunday 29 September: 1pm, 3pm and 5pm

• Wed 9 October: 4:30pm and 5:30pm

• Thursday 10 October: 1pm, 3pm and 5pm

• Saturday 12 October: 1pm, 3pm and 5pm

• Sunday 13 October: 1pm, 2pm, 3pm, 4pm and 5pm

• Sunday 27 October: 1pm and 2pm and 3pm

 

Thank you to Fatoş and the Frieze Team for the opportunity to bring this extraordinary piece to Regents Park, made possible by the incredibly generous support of Knotenpunkt, and to Mtec for awarding us their bursary - we are incredibly grateful.

 

Fani Parali (b. 1983 Greece) lives and works in London. She studied BA Sculpture at Camberwell College of Arts and completed her postgraduate studies at the Royal Academy Schools. Parali's practice includes sculpture, sound, performance, large-scale painting, drawing and moving image. Notable recent exhibitions include 'Aonyx and Drepan & The Minders of the Warm' at Southwark Park Galleries (2020). Her work is currently included in Hayward Galleries touring exhibition 'Acts of Creation: On Art and Motherhood' curated by Hetti Judah (2024).

Frieze Sculpture returns to London's Regent's Park 18 September - 27 October 2024. The much-celebrated public art initiative coincides with Frieze London and Frieze Masters, which take place concurrently in The Regent's Park, 9 - 13 October. Curated by Fatoş Üstek, Frieze Sculpture has expanded for its 12th edition to include 22 leading international artists hailing from five continents, whose work will be sited throughout the park's historic English Gardens.

Aonyx and Drepan, 2020 was originally commissioned by Southwark Park Galleries