Flora Yukhnovich is acclaimed for paintings in which she adopts the language of Rococo, reimagining the dynamism of works by eighteenth-century artists such as Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, François Boucher, Nicolas Lancret and Jean-Antoine Watteau through a filter of contemporary cultural references including film, food and consumerism. New paintings created especially for this exhibition take their initial inspiration from Boucher’s Triumph of Venus, 1740 (in the collection of the Nationalmuseum, Stockholm), which depicts Venus, seated in a seashell, surrounded by sea creatures and representations of love, such as dolphins, tritons, naiads and cupids. Speaking about her work and its relationship to Boucher, the artist says, ‘In mythology, Cronus throws Uranus’s testicles into the sea and Venus emerges, fully formed in the froth of the waves and is carried in a shell to land. I was immediately drawn to the idea of her body being made of the water. The idea of fluidity of form feels like a very painterly concept to me, a bit like creating seemingly solid figures out of wet paint… There is a tendency for water and the sea to be spoken about as female – fluid and soft but also capricious and destructive. I like the potential for strength or force in that association and it’s something I wanted to try and bring to these paintings.’

Born in 1990, Flora Yukhnovich completed her MA at the City & Guilds of London Art School in 2017. She had her first solo exhibition at Brocket, London, in December 2017 and has recently exhibited at Parafin, London, GASK, the Gallery of the Central Bohemian Region, Czech Republic, the Jerwood Gallery Hastings and at Blenheim Walk Gallery, Leeds Arts University, UK. Previous solo exhibitions with Victoria Miro include The Venice Paintings and Barcarole, both held in 2020. Collections include Government Art Collection and David Roberts Art Collection. In 2018 she completed The Great Women Artists Residency at Palazzo Monti, Brescia.

During the second half of 2022, Flora Yukhnovich will have a solo exhibition at Victoria Miro. Also during the second half of the year, she will have an exhibition of works responding to the collection at The Ashmolean, Oxford.