In the Classical world, the pouring of a libation was a sacred ritual. Libations secured the favour of the gods for a risky endeavour: a battle, a journey, a new beginning. To commit to the endeavour that necessitated the libation was to commit to the likelihood of change, of transformation, of a shift in self-perception. The works in Alan Ibell’s new show are marked by these ideas. Vessels for liquid offerings are scattered across the canvases, defamiliarizing the familiar landscapes and heralding Ibell’s shift into a new phase of his practice, one marked by a looseness of brush work and an immersion in ideas generated by a recent trip to Greece.

In Homer’s Odyssey it is a libation that enables the dead to ascend from the underworld and speak to the living; these works are likewise concerned with the divide between worlds. Ibell describes his conception of the works as having two zones, one representing the phenomenological world and one the psychological world in which rituals, memories, and fantasies are created, imbuing the other world with meaning. The divide is mirrored in the separation between the work and the viewer, a metaphorical distance invoked by the looming mountain scapes that dwarf the figures which stand beneath them in the show’s three largest works.

Presiding over the offerings that are represented both in and by the other works is Hebe, cupbearer to the gods and purveyor of eternal youth. The cup she holds is filled with divine nectar, connecting the mundane image of the cup with the capacity for transformation and self-realisation. This connection echoes across the shared imagery of the other works in the show, where caged birds may be the products of divine displeasure, blank pages may be waiting for divine inspiration, and vessels may be full or empty of divine promise, depending on the viewer’s inclination.

Hannah August