Sasha Streshna: Devon Loch

Can you name the major battle depicted in the image above? Not quite, right? That’s Sasha Streshna’s doing, who has taken it upon herself to critique history through her oil paintings, turning grand narratives into unclear tales. Streshna, originally from Ukraine, is an up-and-coming artist in the Greek art scene. In her latest exhibition called Devon Loch, the artist draws inspiration from images she found in Soviet-era textbooks. She uses these images to create a new series of paintings that depict historical events altered to the point of becoming unrecognisable, transforming them into jumbled and confusing memories. The exhibition's title comes from the well-known racehorse Devon Loch, which unexpectedly refused to continue the race just before reaching the finish line in the 1956 Grand National in the UK. Since then, the phrase "doing a Devon Loch" means “failing when very close to winning”. The title hints at interpreting the artworks as an exploration of failure and defiance. Ready to uncover this connecting thread?