Flora Yukhnovich – interview: ‘I’m always looking at history through a kaleidoscope of contemporary references’

Where better to view the work of contemporary rococo-inspired painter Flora Yukhnovich than at the Wallace Collection, where they hang proud among the canvases and decorative items that have long inspired her? She tells us about her work and her inspirations

Flora Yukhnovich in her London studio, February 2022. Photo: Eva Herzog. © Flora Yukhnovich. Courtesy the artist and Victoria Miro.

by ANNA McNAY

Flora Yukhnovich (b1990, Norwich) is a force to be reckoned with. Eager to learn and develop her practice, she approaches each new project or commission as a capsule of opportunity in which to challenge herself, and she has been rewarded by being taken on by two of the most esteemed galleries, Victoria Miro (in 2021) and Hauser & Wirth (in 2023). She has work in the Government Art Collection in London, the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington DC, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts and the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne. Initially training as a portrait painter at the Heatherley School of Fine Art, Yukhnovich began painting in her more recognisable style of today while undertaking an MA at City & Guilds in 2017.

Although seemingly abstract on the surface, the many layers in Yukhnovich’s work collage together inspirations from the rococo period through to contemporary books and films, frequently taking the (female) body as a starting point. She has honed her palette over the years, and she loves to work on a very large scale.

Installation view of Flora Yukhnovich's painting A World of Pure Imagination, 2024, Wallace Collection, London. Photo: Martin Kennedy.

If you visit London’s Wallace Collection, home to one of the world’s finest collections of 18th-century French paintings and decorative arts, before 3 November, you will be able to listen in to the myriad conversations begun by the temporary displacement of two paintings by the French rococo artist François Boucher by two new paintings, made in response to these, by Yukhnovich. Framed in gilt, her works hang at the top of the grand staircase, among the collection’s other pictures by Boucher. His two large paintings, Pastoral with a Bagpipe Player and Pastoral with a Couple near a Fountain (both 1749), have been unframed, and they hang, for the duration of this intervention, in the contemporary white-cube gallery on the ground floor, where they confront visitors in a quite unexpected manner.

Studio International met Yukhnovich, who has long visited the Wallace Collection as her motivational gallery of choice, in her final days at her studio in Bermondsey, east London (she is about to move to New York), to discuss this collaboration and her wider practice.

Anna McNay: Can we start by talking a bit about your Wallace Collection commission? How did it come about? Who approached whom?

Flora Yukhnovich: The project has been in the works for a little while. I met Xavier Bray, [director of the Wallace Collection] when he came to my show Thirst Trap at Victoria Miro in 2022. After that, I joined him for an in conversation at the Wallace Collection during its Disney show.

AMc: Disney show?

FY: Yes, it had a Disney show [Inspiring Walt Disney: The Animation of French Decorative Arts]. It was amazing. It was all about the rococo influences in Disney films. When they were making Beauty and the Beast, the Disney staff had studios at Goodge Street and visited the Wallace Collection for research. Some of the furniture that comes to life in the film was directly inspired by furniture in the Wallace Collection.

Anyhow, Xavier invited me to work on the commission last year. I have been visiting the Wallace for years and studying its beautiful collection of paintings by Boucher, so it is a dream project for me.

François Boucher. Pastoral with a Bagpipe Player, 1749. © The Trustees of the Wallace Collection.

AMc: Did the brief specify the two Boucher paintings for you to respond to?

FY: Yes. Early on we discussed potentially including more works but, in the end, it made sense to focus on the two pastorals [Pastoral with a Bagpipe Player and Pastoral with a Couple near a Fountain]. They are such exceptional paintings. I think they are the largest of Boucher’s pastorals.

AMc: Your two works have now temporarily replaced these two paintings by Boucher, and his are hanging in the white-cube exhibition space downstairs.

FY: Exactly. The idea was to display Boucher’s work in an almost contemporary way, and for my paintings to hang in their place on the landing – a sort of Freaky Friday situation. What would happen when the contexts of the work were swapped? How would that change the way in which the paintings were received and understood?

François Boucher. Pastoral with a Couple near a Fountain, 1749. © The Trustees of the Wallace Collection.

AMc: Do your two works respond directly to the two Boucher paintings, or were those just more of a starting point? Of course, your paintings are now in a wider conversation with the other works from the collection that are still on the landing.

FY: Yes, and it was a bit of both. I used Boucher’s two paintings as a jumping-off point to think about his work more generally. I have been exploring the relationship between painting and decorative languages for a while, and this felt especially relevant to the project. The pastoral was something a bit new.

AMc: Had you done anything like this before? I know you have said that the Wallace Collection is often the first place you will go to if you are stuck for ideas.

FY: Yes, that’s true. I worked on a show at the Ashmolean last year, which was also in response to work from the collection. But my work was displayed in a separate, contemporary-looking exhibition space. This is the first time I have made work with the intention of placing it within the context that I am referencing. It was a challenge. My work couldn’t be too similar to, or too different from the Boucher’s if there was going to be an interesting dialogue. I was careful not to reference anything directly. It’s not a transcription.

AMc: As already mentioned, the two Boucher works are temporarily on display on white walls downstairs. They have also had their frames removed for the duration.

FY: Yes, they have been stripped of their frames and are on completely white walls – which is how my work is normally hung.

François Boucher's paintings in the Housekeeper's Room, Wallace Collection, London, 2024. Photo: Martin Kennedy.

AMc: How does this change the way in which people respond to them?

FY: It gives them space. In a decorative scheme, it’s easy to overlook Boucher’s painterliness and extraordinary ease with the brush. I think the white space invites us to consider them as paintings rather than decoration. Personally, I am surprised by how narrative they seem. I thought of Boucher’s pastorals as an amalgamation of different motifs, rather than a story. But, against the white walls, the contrast is heightened, and the figures are brought to life. They also feel more ominous than I expected – as if some darkness is looming ahead. I didn’t think Boucher’s work did that.

AMc: It’s certainly not what one would associate with him.

FY: Exactly. And I’m resistant to the idea, because I think we like to see moodiness as seriousness. I thought that they were utterly without darkness, but this project has changed my mind. For me, Boucher’s work is important for different reasons. I like the way he plays with artifice. These pastorals, which are based on a pantomime about a love triangle, reference the theatre and the decorative in such interesting ways. They are not fantasies themselves, they are paintings of pre-existing theatrical fantasies, flattening the distinction between the real and the idealised in a way that feels like he is breaking the fourth wall. To me, they feel incredibly contemporary, which is why I find them so compelling.

AMc: How does it change the way that your work is looked at when it is hung in the context of the rest of the collection of paintings and decorative arts?

FY: It's hard to say. I made these works with that context very much in mind. I kept Photoshopping images of the works into the Wallace throughout the painting process. I didn’t feel that they were changed by the setting, rather they were activated by it. The pastoral is about escapism. For me, escape is through a phone or TV screen. I wanted to heighten the colours towards something digital and synthetic. It felt important to lean into the contemporary, knowing that the surroundings and the frames would pull the work back towards the 18th century.

Installation view of Flora Yukhnovich's painting Folies Bergère, 2024, Wallace Collection, London. Photo: Martin Kennedy.

AMc: Would you agree that your work is not narrative? It is more about mark-making?

FY: Mark-making and feeling. I think perception starts with a wave of feeling, before we’re really conscious – the fast-thinking part of the brain. That’s the part of looking that I’m interested in. It’s about how something hits you. In the painting process, I work layer upon layer over months, compressing all that emotion and curiosity into one space, which can be experienced all in one go.

AMc: Do you work on multiple pieces at once, and do they feed into one another?

FY: Yes. I like to focus on a single work for a few days to understand it, to find its personality, but after that I work across several simultaneously. They feed one another and answer each other’s questions

AMc: Do you always work on such a large scale?

FY: Not always, but it’s what I enjoy the most. I like the challenge of feeling smaller than the canvas. I have to use my whole body to make a mark across the canvas. It’s a one-to-one relationship. There is also such broad scope for mark-making, from the tiniest, most detailed sections to huge swathes of paint.

Flora Yukhnovich. Rouge allure, 2022. Oil on linen, 200 x 175 cm (78 3/4 x 68 7/8 in). © Flora Yukhnovich. Courtesy the artist, Victoria Miro and Hauser & Wirth.

AMc: I was going to say it looks like a very physical process.

FY: There is a lot of sitting in between! It is not athletic, but it is physical, for sure.

AMc: Do you ever lay the canvas on the floor and work horizontally?

FY: If they are smaller, I will paint on the floor, but I like to prop them up and lay them down throughout. I am not strong enough to do that with the big paintings.
 
AMc: How do you reach the top of the larger canvases?

FY: I have a ladder and a little scaffold.

AMc: Looking at your different marks, I can see that there are brushstrokes, but do you apply the paint in any other way?

FY: I use brushes and sponges. So much of the rhythm is made by taking paint off the canvas. It is hard to get the speed I want if I’m loading up a paintbrush. The more paint there is on the canvas, the slower it gets.

AMc: The sponge is primarily for taking paint off, then?

FY: Yes, taking off and leaving a wipe mark, which gives direction and movement.

AMc: I can see some drips as well.

FY: It’s very hit and miss. I like trying all kinds of marks, guessing and seeing what sticks. It’s very much a process of trial and error.

AMc: What about your palette? I read that you have eight colours that you always work with.

FY: I use a glass palette, and I mix as I go. I trained as a portrait painter, and we would learn from a different tutor every three weeks. Each tutor came with their own palette or recommendation of different colours. That’s when I began working with these eight colours – a cold, a warm and a transparent and opaque of each colour, but I have tailored it over the years. I can pretty much mix any colour with it now, but it still has its own internal harmonies.

Flora Yukhnovich. Thicker than Peanut Butter, 2020. Oil on linen, 200 x 170 cm (78 3/4 x 66 7/8 in). © Flora Yukhnovich. Courtesy the artist, Victoria Miro and Hauser & Wirth.

AMc: You have certainly got a recognisable palette. People might recognise your work from the colours alone.

FY: I suppose so, but perhaps that has something to do with the references in my work. But, yes, I borrowed the base palette from my tutors.

AMc: And improved it, maybe. But you started out studying portraiture at Heatherley’s, which is very different from what you are doing now. Did it all change when you went to City & Guilds?

FY: Kind of. I was looking through old notebooks the other day, and I found some ideas which I thought were new, written 10 years ago. I think I keep having the same breakthrough idea over and over! I guess I was already interested in all the main elements of my current practice back then, I just didn’t quite know how to bring them into being. Ideas around paint and the body have stayed fundamental to my work. I still think about them as almost symbiotic; it is almost impossible to paint without painting the body in some way. When I went to City & Guilds, I began exploring decorative languages and art history. My work changed completely, but I think those years connecting with paint as a medium and practice informed everything that came later.

AMc: What is it especially about the 18th-century and rococo style that attracts you?

FY: It all started when I hit a wall with portrait painting. I found it serious and boring after a while. I wanted to find play and energy in painting again, so I copied decorative designs and cartoons and focused on anything fun and light-hearted. The work became rococo without me really noticing, and my research finally led me to Fragonard and the 18th century. I suppose, at that point, I realised something about femininity was rolled into my idea of light-hearted aesthetics and the rococo. It’s odd really that a whole moment in art history might be coded feminine. Besides that, it’s a good vehicle to explore fantasy, imagination, excess, flux, sex – all things intrinsically linked to paintings.

Flora Yukhnovich. Maybe She’s Born with It, 2022. Oil on linen, 220 x 330 cm (86 5/8 x 129 7/8 in). © Flora Yukhnovich. Courtesy the artist, Victoria Miro and Hauser & Wirth.

AMc: I am looking at your pegboard over there, which looks rather like a collaged mood board. Is this how you begin thinking about your paintings?

FY: Yes, it’s so basic, but there’s something about putting images together and seeing how they react, testing what I feel about the interaction between them. I try to paint the space in between – that feels really exciting to me. Making the faint edges of perception tangible in some way. Sometimes, it will be films or song lyrics. I try to spread the net really wide. Then, as I get closer to a show, it will get smaller. There will only be a few things hanging there by the time the work is finished.

AMc: You are also influenced by the digital and other contemporary spheres.

FY: Yes, I like thinking about a tumble of ideas and meaning across history, finding images which seem totally disparate, but which come from the same origin. I watch a lot of films and spend too much time on the internet. It’s basically about gathering as much stuff as possible – as much as I can get my hands on. I enjoy it most when I can come to a painting through something that feels contemporary, which I have interacted with in a non-studio kind of way.

AMc: You spoke before about feeling excitement when you come up to a large-scale canvas. Does that mean you don’t experience a struggle making that first mark on a pristine surface?

FY: No, the best day of painting is the first day, it is downhill from there. The possibility is so exciting to me: each day after, I’m closing doors on what it might become.

AMc: How do you begin? Do you prime the canvas?

FY: I start with a pale-yellow ground or a pale-violet ground – yellow to look like dirty varnish on an old painting, violet to skew the palette towards the digital. I put another layer on to show the direction of the light and where the heat in the canvas will be. I make digital collages to guide me along the way, but the ideas change a lot, and the more I can predict where it’s all going, the more bored I become.

Flora Yukhnovich. Bombshell, 2021. Oil on linen, 220 x 185.5 cm (86 5/8 x 73 1/8 in). © Flora Yukhnovich. Courtesy the artist, Victoria Miro and Hauser & Wirth.

AMc: Can you say a little more about the Ashmolean NOW (2023-2024) exhibition you mentioned earlier?

FY: The Ashmolean had just started a new programme of shows with contemporary artists responding to the collection. They have a room that is stacked with still-life paintings, almost like a scientific study of what a still-life is. I thought it was a good opportunity to study Dutch flower painting as a genre and look at its relationship with women. There were some great female still-life painters – but why was that accepted when other genres weren’t? Then also to think about a flower as a representation of a woman’s body, and the idea of “teenageness” and blooming as a young woman. I was looking at horror films and the latent fear that society has about women reaching puberty and discovering their sexual power. I found the project really rewarding because it was so difficult. I was working with a different time period, and I had a whole different palette. The work I made before, especially the work to do with Venus, was all about infinity and water and wide-open spaces, whereas there was claustrophobia to these works – about bodily crevices, about our insides. It was like I returned to the material of paint and moved away from creating space and illusion. I really loved it. I think back on that show, and on making the work for that show, and I feel really happy about it because I felt like I was learning so much. Every day in the studio felt like an exciting challenge.

AMc: In 2018, you undertook The Great Women Artists Residency at Palazzo Monti in Brescia, Italy. What did this entail and what did you gain from it?

FY: It was six weeks in Brescia, in the north of Italy, living in a palazzo with other artists. It was the first time I had ever made work in Italy, and it was quite overwhelming, to be honest. There was so much to see. I was sleeping in a room that had an enormous fresco on the ceiling, which ended up creeping its way into every painting I made there, because every night I would lie there looking at it. I started looking more at Tiepolo and thinking about Italian 18th-century things, which I went on to look at more comprehensively when I did the residency in Venice with Victoria Miro.

AMc: Do you have a particular studio routine?

FY: I love starting a routine and writing it down. I have every intention of keeping to it, but I probably do so for one day. The only thing I’m really routine about is coming in. Then, when I’m in here, whatever happens, happens. I find I’m very productive in the morning. I can see exactly what’s wrong with a painting. I can be deliberate about what needs to happen to it. Throughout the day, I lose control and thought. By the evening, I’m really into it. That’s when it really happens. But I need about seven hours of working before I’m there.

AMc: Do you listen to anything while you work?

FY: I listen to podcasts. I listen to audiobooks. Anything I have already listened to, so that I can zone in and out. I quite like to have a voice.

AMc: So, words rather than music?

FY: I listen to music as well. It really depends on how I’m feeling. If I’m anxious about a work, it can get quite fraught. It can be good to keep my mind partially occupied, so I don’t end up too obsessed with one area.

AMc: Tell me about your titles. Where do they come from? Do you seek to deliberately provoke?

FY: I don’t think so. My works are paintings, so they are naturally historical things, But I exist now, and I choose my historical references because they resonate with something contemporary. So, I’m always looking at history through a kaleidoscope of contemporary references. My titles anchor the work in the present. For one of the Wallace works, I used the title A World of Pure Imagination, taken from the 1971 film Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, the one with Gene Wilder. It’s the scene where the children arrive at the factory. They are so excited by this garden made of sweets, but everything looks quite plasticky. I think Boucher’s work has some of that quality because of its relation to theatre sets. Basically, paintings are most interesting if you can find a contemporary access point. I suppose the titles serve that purpose – for me, and hopefully, for the viewer as well.

AMc: We are here in your Bermondsey studio just days before you move to New York. Tell me when, what, why, how? All the questions!

FY: I hadn’t been there until two years ago, and when I went, I just loved it. I loved the energy. I thought it seemed so exciting. I think it makes sense, because with all the parts of my practice – from film and consumer culture through to decorative architectural motifs – there’s a balance between the American and the European. I’m also very obsessed with abstract expressionist painting, and it will be nice to explore that more. I trained as a figurative painter, and I start figuratively and move back towards something that is more open, more abstract. I would like to explore abstraction and understand how it operates as a language on its own terms. The time I spent in Italy changed things in ways I wasn’t even aware of at the time. I found it so helpful. And the same with the Ashmolean exhibition. I really like these project-based moments and forcing myself to look at one specific thing from the soup that is my practice. I will probably try to always work like this, looking at one small thing at a time. I was talking to a friend recently about how she moves her work on. She said that once she has had a show, when she is ready to make the next body of work, she goes and finds one thing that she really loves, something really small – maybe a scratchy brush that she has never used before – and this one little thing will create a rupture that she then has to work out how to fix, and this will open up new paths. It’s all in the small changes.

AMc: I was going to finish by asking you about your dream residency, but it sounds as if you have pretty much got that planned already.

FY: Versailles. I don’t know if you can do a residency at Versailles, but if you know anyone …

• Flora Yukhnovich and François Boucher: The Language of the Rococo is at the Wallace Collection until 3 November 2024.
• Flora Yukhnovich: Into the Woods is at Ordrupgaard, Charlottenlund, Denmark, from 18 September 2024 to 19 January 2025.