God said to the serpent ‘Cursed are you above all livestock and all wild animals! You will crawl on your belly and you will eat dust all the days of your life’. To the woman he said ‘I will make your pains in childbearing severe and with painful labour you will birth children. Your desire will be for your husband and he will rule over you.’ To Adam he said ‘Because you listened to your wife ate the fruit, cursed is the ground because of you. Through painful toil you will eat food and it will produce thorns and thistles. You will work the fields by the sweat of your brow and you will eat your food until you return to the dust of the ground from where you came.’
(2022)

• Richard LEWER

Through twelve paintings, Richard Lewer examines the creation story of Adam and Eve, central to Abrahamic religions. Particular to Christianity is how this story of the original human couple also represents the concept of ‘original sin’ and ‘the fall of man’. The story has served as a source of inspiration and commentary by artists throughout the history of Western art.

Lewer’s series sits in association with the Carved retable of the Passion of Christ, also known as the Antwerp altarpiece (c. 1511–20) – created as a didactic edifice for the contemplation by the faithful. The association of this significant historical work with Lewer’s series is indicative of how people have always and continue to look to biblical stories for self-examination and understanding of their contemporary world.

Each painting in Lewer’s series represents a chapter or section of the Adam and Eve myth, where figures and elements, such as the serpent and animals in the Garden of Eden seem to emerge from Lewer’s staining of the unprimed canvas. The stain – also a metaphor for evolution – takes its own shape, depending on the application of paint and its dilution. The paintings include allusions to the current climate crisis and global conflicts among others, built up through further staining and layers of paint.