‘The past is a two-way street. In imagination, we chase the dead, shouting, ‘Come back!’ We may suspect that the voices we hear are an echo of our own, and the movement we see is our own shadow. But we sense the dead have a vital force still –they have something to tell us, something we need to understand.’ Hilary Mantel, Reith lecture 2017

Introduction
Stephanie Douet presents ‘Mob of Hordes’, a group of free-standing life-size paintings on board. The work represents the outcome of a period of experiment and mentoring between 2019 and 2020, funded by Arts Council England’s ‘Develop Your Creative Practise’ award.

Since her MA in 1997, Douet has used historical styles such as Chinoiserie, Victorian Gothic and WW2 Utility to make playful and subversive life-size sculptures that insert themselves into narratives of the past. In 2015 her first visit to India prompted her to begin a series of paintings of political agents of the Raj.

Extended paintings
In 2018, stifled by the geometric format of conventional painting Douet painting directly onto board but to life-size shapes of portrait heads and full-size bodies, supported with simple props. Encouraged by mentors Manick Govinda and Sacha Craddock, other imaginative connections started to blossom as she worked on the collection. Mughal painting, Baroque swagger portraiture, Commedia dell'Arte characters, C19th Indian studio portraiture, 18th century political cartoons and Pop art.

The works can be installed in many different arrangements, arranged on the walls, stacked on plinths. The flexibility of the possible arrangements was exciting, and suggested theatricality, the possibility of mixing the total freedom of painting with sculptural values of space, mass, volume which are created in the work by different ways of installing and the structural support of each piece (shelves, plinths, etc).

Each portrait works as a stand-alone piece or in combination with the other pieces, installed according to the site.
The way the pieces are supported plays an important role: different pieces have different structures to make them stand: plinths, coloured and white; fins and stands; baton structures, all of which must be seen as making different architectural compositions. The structures also introduce the notion of falling, of disorder, of high, low, obscuring, stacking; exploring status, hierarchy and loss of face. In a sense, the works are like a game or a kit, offering themselves to many kinds of imaginative play.

Ideas behind the work
Douet is one of a small number of women who paint men, especially men whose portraits are commissioned emblems of power. Her degree study of Greek and Roman sculpture had introduced her to the political language and uses of sculpture to stand in the place of the real man, the god, the patron. Current concerns with the meaning of public power-sculpture brought her to also be interested in the architectural positioning of public sculpture, in particular what happens as the sculpture is pushed and falls.

She was intrigued by many aspects of the gaze; the imperious stare of the political subjects at the camera; the Hindu belief in Darshan, the active viewing of the observer by the graven image; and the effect on her own subjective understanding and sensibility of looking long and carefully at these images.

Site-specific Installation Possibilities
Each installation is site-specific and the site determines the character of the installation -
The process of setting up is prompted by the architecture of each site, and is an exhilarating intuitive process that produces odd juxtapositions and unexpected connections of meaning. The precarious arrangements and possibility of falling add the spark of life, and invites imaginative involvement from the audience (will it fall?).