Cape was drawn to Carrara because of the monumental landscape that has been the source of inspiration and ancestral place of material production for so many of histories? great works. She also found the dichotomy between the natural landscape and harsh intervention by man, slicing away at the mountains heart, to be a key accent in her work.

The glaring white cliffs of marble were sacred in her pilgrimage that was inspired by her engagement with Michelangelo when she was studying art and exploring The Ideal, The Golden Mean, and everything that came with Italian Classicism.

Building on this further, Cape also drew inspiration from how the Renaissance focused on representations of idealized reality and the mathematical feat of perspective and composition.

Cape says, ?This series is a return to the roots of my practice – classical ideas of depth and illusion – while acknowledging current investigations of surface materiality. These works have conceptual nods to contemporary theory, while their structure acknowledges historical notions of looking through, and into, the picture plane. This tension between representation and action offers a dynamic experience of which lays bare the fundamentals of one’s practice, while reflecting the historical move of one to the other.? -Sophie Cape

With the quarries now being commandeered by the Italian mafia, who have pillaged 2,000 years worth of marble in just 2 short years, these works are more important than ever to the legacy of creation and artisan culture.

Montagne di marmo- drawings from the quarries of Carrara 12th – 30th October 2016