Louisa Chambers
MA Painting, Royal College of Art
We were drawn to the way in which Louisa Chambers’ paintings create a world, with a language of its own. The referents are just recognizable… the more you look the more you begin to piece together, but the familiar things just get stranger.
Inventing fantastical objects and constructions... More»
Inventing fantastical objects and constructions... More»
We were drawn to the way in which Louisa Chambers’ paintings create a world, with a language of its own. The referents are just recognizable… the more you look the more you begin to piece together, but the familiar things just get stranger.
Inventing fantastical objects and constructions are the starting points of Louisa’s recent practice. These spaces and objects symbolize personal narratives; they are aesthetically playful but have an underlining dark humour. She primarily uses memory but also appropriates from source materials that reference architecture, popular culture, scientific technology, folklore and mysticism. From these sources and through the mediums of paint and drawing, shapes transform into anthropomorphizing inanimate objects or machines. Sometimes they are clunky and fragile never able to function and teetering on the verge of collapse.
During the process of painting, shapes lock together hovering between abstraction and figuration. Enjoying the act of blurring fiction and reality sometimes an eye appears in a dark space; the towers gain cameras as eyes or a separate limb appears on a structure creating humorous absurdity. As a solution, invented helmets become an internal bubble to blank out the surroundings of the constant buzzing from the city.
Inspiration is derived from experiences living in contemporary society, the constant technological bombardment and physical dislocation. Louisa is interested in modernist ideals concerning play and objects that assist humans in a temporary, placeless world. However the work conjures up dystopian feelings where objects or spaces seem to be under surveillance and attack, needing protection. She enjoys this conflict between ideas and realisation but also the friction of falling in and out of personal dreamscapes.
Louisa studied an MA in Painting at the Royal College of Art (2005-2007) and at the Surrey Institute of Art and Design (2002-2005) where she achieved a BA(Hons)Fine Art with first class honours.
Selected Group Shows include:
(2010) Melt, Mile End Art Pavilion, London (Forthcoming: 12-17 October 2010), BAT Pack, ,Mile End Art Pavilion, London, Pistols & Pollinators: A Collaborative Project, Accident and Emergence, London, (2009) 'Romance Derived' Fringe MK: Annual Painting Prize 2009, Milton Keynes, Salon 09, Matt Roberts Art, London, Fault Line: Art in the Age of Anxiety, The Nunnery, London, Skyscrapers under the Sea, Madam Lillies, London, Drawings with Dolphins, Crimes Town Gallery. In 2008 she was selected for the prestigious John Moores 25 Contemporary Painting Prize.
Inventing fantastical objects and constructions are the starting points of Louisa’s recent practice. These spaces and objects symbolize personal narratives; they are aesthetically playful but have an underlining dark humour. She primarily uses memory but also appropriates from source materials that reference architecture, popular culture, scientific technology, folklore and mysticism. From these sources and through the mediums of paint and drawing, shapes transform into anthropomorphizing inanimate objects or machines. Sometimes they are clunky and fragile never able to function and teetering on the verge of collapse.
During the process of painting, shapes lock together hovering between abstraction and figuration. Enjoying the act of blurring fiction and reality sometimes an eye appears in a dark space; the towers gain cameras as eyes or a separate limb appears on a structure creating humorous absurdity. As a solution, invented helmets become an internal bubble to blank out the surroundings of the constant buzzing from the city.
Inspiration is derived from experiences living in contemporary society, the constant technological bombardment and physical dislocation. Louisa is interested in modernist ideals concerning play and objects that assist humans in a temporary, placeless world. However the work conjures up dystopian feelings where objects or spaces seem to be under surveillance and attack, needing protection. She enjoys this conflict between ideas and realisation but also the friction of falling in and out of personal dreamscapes.
Louisa studied an MA in Painting at the Royal College of Art (2005-2007) and at the Surrey Institute of Art and Design (2002-2005) where she achieved a BA(Hons)Fine Art with first class honours.
Selected Group Shows include:
(2010) Melt, Mile End Art Pavilion, London (Forthcoming: 12-17 October 2010), BAT Pack, ,Mile End Art Pavilion, London, Pistols & Pollinators: A Collaborative Project, Accident and Emergence, London, (2009) 'Romance Derived' Fringe MK: Annual Painting Prize 2009, Milton Keynes, Salon 09, Matt Roberts Art, London, Fault Line: Art in the Age of Anxiety, The Nunnery, London, Skyscrapers under the Sea, Madam Lillies, London, Drawings with Dolphins, Crimes Town Gallery. In 2008 she was selected for the prestigious John Moores 25 Contemporary Painting Prize.
