Following a highly successful debut at Sydney Contemporary 2025, Saint Cloche presents Benevolent Folk, a new body of work by South Australian multidisciplinary artist Luca Lettieri.
Across Benevolent Folk, images return to a recurring subject yet appear altered through duplication, mirroring, augmentation, and the stripping away of colour. Each variation becomes both echo and divergence, suggesting identity as something multiple rather than fixed.
Motifs of eyes, tears, and mouths recur throughout the series, drawn from the ex voto traditions of Southern Italy. Historically offered as tokens of devotion, gratitude, or protection, these symbolic fragments are recontextualised as contemporary gestures of vulnerability and care, carrying both personal resonance and inherited cultural memory.
Material decisions are central to the work. Hot-dip galvanised steel develops subtle variation across its reflective surface over time. Sand mixed into paint produces a coarse, resistant texture that interrupts the image, while South Australian sandstone functions as both structural and sculptural support, grounding the work physically and geographically.
Steel grids warp, surfaces ripple, and stone appears suspended within delicate frameworks. Rather than resolving tension, Lettieri allows instability and resilience to coexist, inviting the viewer into the charged space between control and collapse.
In Benevolent Folk, Lettieri proposes that strength rarely exists without vulnerability. Instead, it emerges through negotiation between opposing forces, inherited histories, and the evolving contours of the self.
