Charlotte Brisland
Degree: Painting
University: Royal College of Art
Graduation Year: 2004
New Blood Art Commentary
What’s emptier than an uninhabited landscape? An uninhabited landscape featuring an empty house, as Charlotte Brisland’s paintings do. They evoke places that are no place, but a hybrid of real and imagined locations researched by the artist, in the vein of Edward Hopper and Andrew Wyeth. Scenes spotlighted with shadowplay – formed of the uncanny splicing of dark and light – create heightened drama in the absence of human figures in Brisland’s work. Colours that strike one as transposed from TV amplify the sense of slipping between the literal and virtual. All this happens in the context of attenuated space: a background or medium that seems uncompressed by gravitational pull.
Artist Statement
The paintings are the dreamlike remnants of inner worlds which undulate between real and unreal. I see them as portraits; as identifiers of self and am never certain if I am the house, or the one looking at the house, or if I am the forests and mountains which contain it. The escape for me is always in the making of them; the process of creating fictitious worlds and then manifesting them in colour, negotiating the problems and bringing them to a conclusion. Moving to the worlds within is to escape the world without. For me, there is a strong connection between what exists visually without in the world and what is going on in our inner worlds. As a collective these worlds are intrinsically interchangeable. A house is an echo of our need for shelter, it is the visual manifestation of it. Although it is a physical need; our wellbeing depends upon it, a place to retreat and be protected in order to create.
In the making is when the world goes quiet and there is only this other being and me in a room, battling it out in murmurs and mumbles, knowing that there are a thousand pathways, creeks and caves to negotiate.
Solo Exhibitions
(2023) Swamp, Canfas, Cardigan, Wales
(2023) Lucazade, CourtX, Portsmouth
(2021) Humdrum apocalypse, Yellow edge, Gosport
(2021) Art through glass, Jackhouse gallery, Portsmouth
(2007) Infinite fragments, Fishmarket, Northampton
(2003) Autovacation, Roadmender, Northampton
Group Exhibitions
(2023) Auction for War Child, Art on a postcard, Soho, London
(2023) Escape In/Out, follow.art, Global
(2022) Otherworlds, Cardiff made, Cardiff
(2022) A generous space, Hastings contemporary, Hastings
(2021) ING Discerning eye, Mall galleries, London
(2021) Works on paper, Blue shop cottage, London
(2020) Select dream, John Lewis empty building, Portsmouth
(2018) Beep, Painting biennale, Swansea
(2018) 17-19 hertz, Periscope, Salzburg, Austria
(2015) Chelsea prize, Agora gallery, New York
(2013) Group show, Art lacuna, London
(2011) 48 stunden, neukolln,, Cafe schonsted, gefangnis, Berlin
(2008) International painting prize, Guache coranty, Barcelona, Spain
(2007) Contemporary art projects, Contemporary art projects, London
(2006) Zero ji, Shoe factory, Japan
(2006) New painters, Grusenmeyer gallery, Belgium
(2006) Gastrophoria, Pump house gallery, London
(2005) New painters, Long & Ryle, London
(2004) Arrivals, Pump house gallery, London
(2004) The show, Royal college of art, London
(2004) Substance abuse, Chambers gallery, London
(2003) Bloomberg new contemporaries, Static gallery, Barbican curve, Liverpool and London
Competitions, Prizes & Awards
(2018) Jackson’s painting prize
(2017) National open, award winner for the south of England
(2019) Artist feature, create magazine
(2022) Artist interview with Floorr magazine
(2023) Silent auction for art on a postcard