A two person exhibition by Giulia Mangoni and Augusta Lardy Micheli

C.G.Williams

Verzura

Palazzo Sergardi Biringucci, Siena

16 July - 10 August 2023

C.G Williams, Siena, is pleased to announce Verzura, a two-person exhibition of new work by Augusta Lardy Micheli and Giulia Mangoni.

Taking over the entirety of the Piano Nobile of Palazzo Sergardi-Biringucci, together with its garden, stables, and fencing room, as well as the gardener’s shed, C.G.Williams’s primary exhibition space, Verzura includes paintings, copper plates and works on paper by Augusta, and paintings and painted bronze sculptures by Giulia.

Born out of a proposal of the two artists for an exhibition titled Under the Hedge, the show has developed into an ambitious artistic intervention, aimed towards bringing to life elements of the building, its history, architecture, and nature, in an exploration of memory and place.

Ahead of the exhibition, Augusta and Giulia spent time at the Palazzo and walked the Montagnola Senese in May, to allow for their work to be grounded in its space and in that of the country surrounding Siena, and to exchange ideas aided by the naturally progressive act of walking.

Augusta, having just finished a large body of work exhibited in Madrid earlier in the year, felt the starting point for Siena would be drawing, for its cleansing, freeing effect. She spent dozens of hours realising the most intricate drawings of undergrowth on a smaller scale. Alongside these, Augusta explored new ways for her to work with copper plates, being interested in their oxidisation process, and in rendering, through her scratches, a reflection on water she had photographed in Castiglioncello, on the Tuscan coast.

Two large paintings, together with scaled down works, were born out of her wanting to capture the Macchia, the rich and dense vegetation typical of the Mediterranean. The result of this new corpus of work is an essay on the Locus Amoenus, where the viewer is invited to dive into environments which are not merely transcribed from nature, but that are places of memory and of feeling.

Giulia’s practice in recent years has been aimed towards uncovering the Genius Loci, the spirit of a place. At Palazzo Sergardi-Biringucci, Giulia responded to the frescoed ceilings by Ademollo, the Piccolo Teatro, the unique gem of a theatre at the heart of the Palazzo, and drawings by the woman who commissioned its construction, Marga Sergardi, a pioneering figure in the cultural life of Italy. Marga Sergardi’s drawings, exhibited at the Piccolo Teatro, are imaginative designs of theatre costumes she had won a prize for at the Littoriali della Cultura di Como, a public contest held by the Fascist Regime in 1940. Giulia was drawn by how Marga Sergardi, who had fought in the Italian Resistance during the War, had taken part in this political and propagandistic cultural review, later hiding the drawings for these to be forgotten, out of shame. Out of Marga Sergardi’s characters, Giulia has made unique painted bronze sculptures, and included these in large-scale paintings, which reference stage curtains, and bring the undergrowth of the Montagnola Senese indoors, playing with history, mythology, memory and identity.

Augusta Lardy Micheli was born in Switzerland in 1994, she lives and works in London. Augusta completed a BA in Philosophy at King’s College, London (2017), and a BA in Fine Art at City and Guilds, London (2021), where she was awarded the Freelands Painting Prize. In 2022 she completed a residency at Casa Lü, Mexico City.

Giulia Mangoni was born in Isola del Liri, Frosinone, in 1991, where she lives and works, after a decade in Brazil. Giulia completed a BA in Painting at City and Guilds, London (2014), where she was the recipient of the Skinner Connard's Travel Prize and the Chadwick Healey Prize. Giulia also holds an MFA from the SVA Art Practice programme in New York (2019).