A series of paintings grounded in memory by artist Sarah Muirhead. Recently on display at Pontone Gallery in London last month, Muirhead latest works move away from the kind of portraiture she is known for to explore the body, shifting her focus to haunting details like hands, feet, and jewellery. Here the intention is less about portraying subjects as they were, but rather, how they linger in the mind. Dramatized, distorted, and embellished.
“The act of painting, like remembering, becomes sanctified not because it reveals truth, but because of the care and attention it requires. The devotional quality throughout this work is not religious, exactly, but borrows the aesthetic language of reverence: chandeliers, glowing skin, sacred gestures. Yet, this is devotion laced with humour and self-awareness, flirting with the distant cousins of kitsch and fetish. It straddles the line between tenderness and distance; vulnerability and performance…. ‘I saw you. Even if you didn’t see me back.’”
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