Gina Fischli’s Ravenous and Predatory inaugurates Cork Street Banners

In an historic moment, Gina Fischli becomes the first-ever artist to exhibit banners across Cork Street, the centre of the highest concentration of galleries in London and the spiritual and cultural home of the global art world.

Gina Fischli / Exhibition View for Ravenous and Predatory (2021) / Courtesy of the artist / Photograph by Luke Hayes

The first participant of the Cork Street Banners commission, Fischli’s site-specific installation Ravenous and Predatory (2021) begins 7 October 2021, unveiled to coincide with Frieze London, the capital’s busiest art market week. The work will be exhibited for six months.

Gina Fischli / Exhibition View for Ravenous and Predatory (2021) / Courtesy of the artist / Photograph by Luke Hayes

A mouse, bat, squirrel, blackbird and wolf draw the viewer’s eye up, past Cork Street’s ground floor windows. The imagery has been gathered by Fischli via online screengrabs and open-source platforms, barring the blackbird, which is by wildlife photographer Paul Sorrell.

Gina Fischli / Exhibition View for Ravenous and Predatory (2021) / Courtesy of the artist / Photograph by Luke Hayes

The animal portraits directly interact with their surroundings and express an emotion or action for us all. Whilst they pose as something that seems at first glance endearing, there is an undercurrent of intimidation and potential danger heightened by their enlarged format and aerial perspective.

Gina Fischli / Exhibition View for Ravenous and Predatory (2021) / Courtesy of the artist / Photograph by Luke Hayes

Fischli, a graduate from the Royal Academy of Art, was among the diverse group of artists selected by guest editor Hans Ulrich Obrist, Artistic Director at the Serpentine Galleries, for CATALOGUE, the art journal published by Cork Street Galleries. Published October 2020, CATALOGUE 4.5 was a special-edition created entirely during lockdown as a way of celebrating ideas and the creative energy of the global art community.

Posing the question ‘what is your unrealised project?’ to 39 new-generation artists, Obrist hoped in his editor’s letter that many of the projects would soon become realised. Fischli’s contribution, Street Flags Proposal from 2017, is now being realised with the support of Cork Street Galleries.

Gina Fischli / Exhibition View for Ravenous and Predatory (2021) / Courtesy of the artist / Photograph by Luke Hayes

Says Fischli: “In the three years I studied at the Royal Academy I spent every day in Mayfair and with the tension of this neighbourhood. I found it endlessly fascinating because it visualises so much of what London as a city is right now but also a fantasy landscape of what it once was. It is an intriguingly beautiful woman that has undergone over thirty facelifts and stands apart from any timeline. I love art in public places and immediately started to think about ways art could exist in this peculiar landscape which is really tricky because all the space is already densely occupied. This collage artwork was originally handed in as a proposal for the Royal Academy’s 250th year anniversary and then last year I was so happy to share it as my ‘unrealised project’ for CATALOGUE magazine and finally give it life. I really hope the work will be of good service to everyone.”