Have you seen Dante?

The Vitrine Gallery, in south London, is home to the new eclectic and somewhat anthropological exhibition Have You Seen Dante? Exhibiting on Bermondsey Street are Dazed favourite Maurizio Anzeri, David Buckley, Samantha Donnelly, Justin Eagle, Clare Kenny and Damien Meade. This group exhibition takes a closer look at how the human body is depicted and displayed in art practice, from its objectification to an exploration of what makes it human. The work and perspective of the group is diverse, with inky prints to complex installations, as the exhibition isn't complied of figurative works, but instead impressions of and representations of the body. We asked two artists about their works, and this is what they said

Justin Eagle: “The set of four footprint works included in the Vitrine show were conceived after spending time producing work that dealt with the accessorizing of the body. I wanted to achieve a kind of closer contact by using a more primal element of the body and I suppose the footprint is the first print humans ever made. To move it away from this primal mark, I kept my sock on so that the footprint’s intimate revealing mark is hidden. It’s a bit like leaving your socks on during sex.”

Maurizio Anzeri: “I have contributed a piece called Naturetrane. It is part of a series of nine pieces. The work is inspired by Virginia Woolf's Mrs Dalloway. I recreated the group of guests that will attend the party in the novel. Each sculpture is completely different in terms of shape and colour. The piece in the Vitrine show is made of synthetic hair and threads stitched together. Like Justin Eagle’s works, it is both primitive and sophisticated.”

Have You Seen Dante? is on display at the Vitrine Gallery, Bermondsey Street from 12 December 2012 - 19 January 2013