The Last Word Always Belongs to the Mountain
Ora-Ora is pleased to announce a new solo exhibition by UK-born, US-based artist Stephen Thorpe. Titled The Last Word Always Belongs to the Mountain, thenew show will take place at Ora-Ora’s Tai Kwun space during Art Month (March 2025). The artist will also be part of Ora-Ora’s group show at Art Basel Hong Kong (Booth 1B33).
Thorpe returns for his third solo exhibition at Ora-Ora in Hong Kong, a city where he taught at Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) for several years. In his latest solo exhibition at Ora-Ora, Thorpe unveils an entirely new body of work that marks a subtle yet distinct visual shift from his previous showcases – Enter the Forest at its Darkest Point (2022) and Semi-Conscious (2020) – this time centred on “the mountain.”
The exhibition’s title is inspired by a quote from Russia-born mountaineer Anatoli Boukreev, whose words evoke a profound reference for mountains as enduring symbols of transcendence, strength and the human pursuit of higher truths – themes at the heart of all Thorpe’s paintings. Here the artist notes, throughout history and across cultures, mountains have been regarded as places of power and mysticism, home to deities, ascetic sages and creatures of myth. Depicted as thresholds between the mortal world and the divine, their rugged peaks form the border where human ambition meets the unknown.
Thorpe’s new paintings on display at Ora-Ora in Hong Kong examine our fractured relationship with these culturally significant landscapes, through contrasts of tone and texture, challenging our assumptions of what is marginal and what is teeming with life and meaning. In so doing, similar to his earlier “corner” paintings, Thorpe plays on and inverts notions of the interior and exterior, creating platforms for introspection and inviting an active examination of one’s own internal consciousness.
Distant mountains, rendered with unique flatness and eerie sense of “unreality,” are framed by beautifully intricate and highly textured rugs and tapestries. Through this textural contrast, formed through the juxtaposition of quasi-woven frames and far-off mountain ranges, Thorpe muses on the disconnects of modern life, how we have become unanchored from nature, from tradition and centuries-old certainties, forging a tangible sense of groundlessness –which his paintings only seem to amplify.
In the words of Ora-Ora co-founder and CEO, Henrietta Tsui-Leung, “Stephen Thorpe’s new series is a journey to far away mountain ranges yet deeply connected to our society and to our own psychology. His paintings represent beautiful schisms, chasms, fractures and surprising harmonies in which we learn revelatory truths about ourselves.”
In The Last Word Always Belongs to the Mountain, Thorpe continues to explore themes rooted in psychoanalysis – particularly the work of Carl Jung – alongside cultural archetypes influenced by the stylistic traditions of Japanese woodcuts and the natural landscapes of Scotland, where the artist grew up. His intricately composed paintings embody a dynamic interplay of dualities, synergies and contradictions. This tension manifests in every aspect of his work, from the physical application of dry-brushed paint used to create semi-hewn rugs to glossy, gradient landscapes; as well as the subject matter, depicting the busy patterns of domestic objects like tapestries, to quiet scenes of nature, composed with skewed perspectives and grounded by foreboding birds.
The artist will travel from New York to Hong Kong to be present at the opening event (details below) and will be available for interview. The exhibition will be accompanied by a publication featuring an essay on Thorpe’s work by Barry Schwabsky, an American critic, historian and preeminent voice on contemporary painting.
