About the event
Janus, a solo presentation by Julian Wild, took place from 22 January to 30 April 2019.
The exhibition was part of an on-going collaboration between the School and Lizzie Collins of the Zuleika Gallery and the works were provided courtesy of the William Bennington Gallery.
Wild has achieved critical and commercial success in his 20 year career, with works held in notable public and private collections. In 2017 he unveiled Origin, his most ambitious sculpture to date and the largest public sculpture in Oxford, commissioned by the Li Ka Shing Big Data Institute and the University of Oxford. In 2013 he was elected by his peers as Vice President of the Royal Society of Sculptors.
The exhibition was named after Janus, the two-faced Roman god of beginnings, transitions and endings, who was understood to be able to see the past and the future simultaneously, a perspective that gave him a unique insight into the present.
'Janus offered Wild the opportunity to take a retrospective look at past glories,’ explained Lizzie Collins. ‘Instead he saw it as a chance to analyse and deconstruct his own artistic practice and to take it as a starting point to develop and move his creative process forward'.