Why does Théodore Géricault’s famous painting The Raft of the Medusa continue to inspire contemporary artists even centuries after its creation? And how does it relate to today’s world? Curators Michaela Šilpochová and Otto M. Urban will host a discussion with artists Tom de Freston and Conrad Botes, whose work is featured in the current exhibition Argus & Medusa. The programme includes admission to the exhibition.

Conrad Botes is a South African artist whose practice encompasses painting, drawing, printmaking, sculpture, and comics. His work combines a distinctive comic-book style with dark humour, elements of the grotesque, and biblical or religious motifs. His paintings, prints, and sculptures often explore issues of violence, gender, race relations, guilt, and power. He studied illustration at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague and later earned a master’s degree in fine arts from Stellenbosch University. His works have been shown in major exhibitions such as the Havana Biennial (2006), the Biennale of Sydney (2010), and Impressions from South Africa (2011) at MoMA in New York. In 2004 he received the Absa l’Atelier award. Together with Anton Kannemeyer, he founded the magazine Bitterkomix, through which they have been commenting on South African society, politics, race, religion, and power relations since the early 1990s. Botes lives and works in Cape Town. His work is currently featured in the Argus & Medusa exhibition at DOX.

Tom de Freston is a British artist based in Oxford. In his work he combines painting, film, text, and performance to create dark, multilayered visual worlds in which he often draws inspiration from literature and mythology and explores themes of human vulnerability and loss. He studied fine art at Leeds Metropolitan University and art history at the University of Cambridge. His book Wreck: A Story of Art and Survival (2022) is a personal text about creativity, trauma, and the possibilities of art which was inspired by Théodore Géricault’s painting The Raft of the Medusa. He frequently collaborates with his wife, the writer Kiran Millwood Hargrave, and together they have published, among other works, the picture books Julia and the Shark (2021), which was named Waterstones Children’s Gift of the Year and was shortlisted for the Waterstones Book of the Year, and Leila and the Blue Fox (2022), winner of the Wainwright Prize for Children’s Writing. Tom de Freston’s work is currently featured in the exhibition Argus & Medusa at DOX.

Otto M. Urban is a curator and art historian. His main professional interest lies in Czech and international art of the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries. He has lectured on the history of Czech modern art at various academic institutions in the Czech Republic and abroad. From 2012 to 2016 he headed the Department of Theory and History of Art at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague. From 2017 he was the curator and later the director of the Collection of Nineteenth-Century Art and Classical Modernism at the National Gallery Prague. He has written a number of books and monographs and curated many group and solo exhibitions. He has been the chief curator of the DOX Centre for Contemporary Art since 2020.