Guided Tour - Dépendance gallery

Founded in late 2003, dépendance has played a pivotal role for over twenty years in introducing new artistic voices to Brussels.

The gallery has notably hosted the first international exhibitions of many artists who are now widely recognised, while maintaining a constant dialogue between emerging talents and established figures. This balanced approach has made dépendance a space of experimentation, discovery, and reflection.

The two exhibitions will be presented by Louis-Philippe Van Van Eeckhoutte, art historian and director at dépendance gallery.

We will visit the exhibitions of two artists whose practices explore memory, history, identity, and social constructions through very different pictorial languages: Alexandra Metcalf and Iris van Dongen.

Alexandra Metcalf works with brightly coloured marbling techniques combined with painting to connect image, memory, and history. Her works reference aged book pages and traditional crafts, suggesting how the past continues to inhabit the present. This approach forms part of a reflection on gendered labour, through ornamental and meticulous gestures historically associated with feminine practices.

Iris van Dongen creates large-scale monumental paintings that merge historical references with contemporary cultures. Her female portraits recall the melancholic figures of 19th-century Pre-Raphaelite painting through their distant, absent gazes, while their clothing and attitudes draw from metal aesthetics and various contemporary subcultures.

Adress : Dépendance gallery

Rue du Marché aux Porcs 4/8-10

1000 Bruxelles

Belgium

Pictures : 

Alexandra Metcalf, A RECORD OF THE FEVER, 2025, oil, ebru on canvas, artist frame, 200 x 100 cm