Mary Reid Kelley and Patrick Kelley have been working collectively since 2008. By way of picture, movie, textual content and efficiency they make humorous, sharp satires, with observations predominantly taken from fiction and characters realised in an immediately recognisable manner. Of their present exhibition at Mayfair’s Pilar Corrias Gallery, nonetheless, they’re tackling the enduring real-life icon that’s Marie Antoinette, and the feminine members of her courtroom who additionally died in the course of the French Revolution.
‘Finest Femmes Endlessly’ provides a voice to Marie Antoinette, her greatest pal the Princesse de Lamballe, and King Louis XV’s mistress – Marie Antoinette’s rival on the courtroom of Versailles – Madame du Barry, all of whom have been killed in extraordinarily brutal methods in the course of the revolution.
‘I feel Marie Antoinette’s notoriety actually killed her,’ says Mary. ‘She was so in style and exquisite when she was younger, and he or she was so influential with trend. Folks have been so thrilled at any time when they noticed her. I feel all that got here crashing down on her – everybody who previously beloved and knew her was able to activate her.’
Mary Reid Kelley, Marie Antoinette and Lassie, 2025
(Picture credit score: Picture by Ben Westoby / High quality Artwork Documentation. Courtesy the artist and Pilar Corrias, London)
Mary and Patrick’s work is distinctive. The pair’s monochromatic, graphic fashion incorporates a cartoonish or burlesque aesthetic that enhances the satirical, scripted verse written by Mary, giving a voice to the characters they painting.
Over a four-channel video set up, the ladies’s factors of view are conveyed by way of the prism of their constrained, brief lives. The Palace of Versailles was a gilded cage for the French aristocracy at the moment, who have been summoned by the courtroom to stay communally. They participated at courtroom in an environment of competitors, intrigue and claustrophobia, unable to go away.
‘We tried to herald the profane side in [the] obsession with trend,’ says Mary of the video set up. ‘The opening sequence between Marie Antoinette and du Barry could be very sexually bawdy, however plenty of the textual content is within the type of a prayer. We have been attempting to carry collectively the bawdiest and but probably the most tragic parts of this [story].’
The exhibition is put in with an altarpiece in thoughts and the work is ‘emceed’ by Saint Denis, the patron saint of Paris. Carrying his head below one arm is Saint Denis, who was beheaded at Montmartre (martyr hill) and, legend has it, carried his personal head to the Parisian district now often known as St Denis. The saint represents martyrdom as a tribute to the three ladies, and this movie is sympathetic to them. The artists consider that none of them wanted to have died as they did. The work can be a darkly humorous nod to the usage of the guillotine.
Mary Reid Kelley, Queen, 2025
(Picture credit score: Picture by Ben Westoby / High quality Artwork Documentation. Courtesy the artist and Pilar Corrias, London)
Satire falls out and in of trend. Used all through historical past, particularly within the interval of the French Revolution within the type of pamphlets, it has lengthy been used to carry energy to account.
‘We have all the time felt that satire was a manner of gaining proximity to a topic, and it’s such an previous style,’ Mary says. ‘It is so foundational to human modes of expression. Typically, we’re a straight historical past after which a completely up to date satirical sort of historical past as nicely.’
The artists’ work provides voices to unvoiced folks and unvoiced issues, talking to ladies and the function of girls in historical past and in literature. In satirising archetypes, they name consideration to how historic concepts have pervaded to the current day.
Mary Reid Kelley, Marie Antoinette’s LID, 2025
(Picture credit score: Picture by Ben Westoby / High quality Artwork Documentation. Courtesy the artist and Pilar Corrias, London)
‘I feel we made our first piece in 2008 collectively, and we’ve actually by no means strayed from the essential dynamic of I write one thing, and Pat is available in and movies it,’ Mary says. ‘I choose the themes by intestine intuition, and plenty of occasions I’m knowledgeable by the earlier venture. Within the case of Marie Antoinette, I actually fell down a Wikipedia gap after which I could not cease serious about it. I even have my everlasting inspirations, and these are folks like [Algernon Charles] Swinburne and [Edgar Allan] Poe, and among the First World Warfare poets.’
Provides Patrick, ‘I feel it is necessary within the early phases for Mary to be in her personal world of the writing and never have any type of concern about it being seen from the surface till she’s prepared. That is all the time an thrilling second, as a result of then I am normally flooded with imagery, studying it and pondering what [the work] might appear like.’
There’s a vaudevillian notice to their work, which is all the time filmed in the identical fashion, drawing the viewer out of the time of the venture and into Mary and Patrick’s world. Finest Femmes Endlessly is one among solely two works by the duo which can be based mostly on actual historic figures, the opposite being a fee by the Nationwide Portrait Gallery of a double video portrait of Admiral Lord Horatio Nelson and the notorious Girl Emma Hamilton. In line with the artists, this will or might not be the beginning of a pattern.
Mary Reid Kelley, Marie Antoinette and Walter Cronkite, 2025
(Picture credit score: Picture by Ben Westoby / High quality Artwork Documentation. Courtesy the artist and Pilar Corrias, London)
‘I feel there’s plenty of completely different causes to proceed doing historic figures, it is not nearly revisiting some heated controversy,’ says Patrick.
‘It is actually a minefield,’ provides Mary. ‘I might really feel very reluctant to choose a topic that is far more current in time than the 18th century, as a result of it is one factor to tweak portrayals of Nelson or Marie Antoinette, and it is one other to go for figures which can be a lot nearer [to us] in time. I do not actually care about getting the rise out of individuals in that manner.’
‘Finest Femmes Endlessly’ is at Pilar Corrias, London, till 7 March 2026, pilarcorrias.com
