Sound Up: Irene Cara – I’m Gonna Live For Ever

Videos and Photos: Brooke Benington and Polly Morgan

Juno Calypso

Juno Calypso

“The lone figure in all of Juno Calypso’s images is her: she photographs herself in couples-only motels, abandoned underground bunkers and heart-shaped hot tubs. Across film, photography and installation, Calypso builds a soft pink universe of femininity, solitude, desire and despair, all with an ultra-critical edge. In the process, she’s become one of the most recognisable photographers working today, forging a totally unique aesthetic that has seen her move seamlessly from immersive, intimate gallery exhibitions to leading major fashion campaigns. Calypso’s art is deeply sinister, hyper-feminine and filled with humour. This is cinematic, introspective art for the age of the self and the selfie. ”

– Eddy Frankel, Time Out

Juno Calypso

Christopher Page

Christopher Page

Christopher Page is a painter of light, shadow and reflection. He makes trompe l’oeil paintings on canvas, and directly on walls and ceilings, that confuse the boundaries between real and virtual space. Paintings of framed paintings with shadows cast across their surfaces call into question where the work begins and ends; blank mirrors confront us with our own absence; glowing skies distort architectural space. And yet, the paintings are not trompe l’oeil in the traditional sense. Whilst drawing from Baroque illusion, they hover on the edge of abstraction, thinking as they do about our flattened world of screens.

Christopher Page

Mat Collishaw

Tellingly titled The Mask of Youth, Collishaw’s hyperrealistic, animatronic mixed media installation goes to great lengths to depict what the Queen must have really looked like when she was sitting for her portrait: she repeatedly adjusts herself awkwardly, fidgeting her lips as her blinking eyes dart around. The less glamorous, more human aspects of the Queen, like her smallpox scars and wispy chin hairs, are fully visible here, as Collishaw—who, to be fair, didn’t depict the black teeth she developed as a result of her notorious sweet tooth—was under no obligation to please or pass the approval of the last Tudor. (Though he has considered her reaction were she still alive: “I think she would be appalled,” he told the Royal Museums Greenwich. “My head would be on the block.”)

Mat Collishaw

Mat Collishaw

Mat Collishaw’s work deals with themes of representation and illusion, often through the combination of different types of media. His subject matter merges the beautiful with the disturbing. Collishaw was born in Nottingham and studied at Goldsmiths College in London, where his work was included in the influential ‘Freeze’ exhibition, organised by Damien Hirst. He works predominantly with video, installation and photography and now AI.

Mat Collishaw

Polly Morgan

Morgan grew up surrounded by animals in the English countryside. Not anticipating a career in the arts, she moved to London to pursue a degree in English literature. While working at a bar, Morgan gained exposure to London’s art scene. Initially, she pursued taxidermy out of personal interest, but she found her calling after a workshop led by taxidermist George Jamieson.

Traditional taxidermy strives to portray a creature as it was in life, but Morgan views each animal as a raw material, the way another artist might use paint or charcoal. The inspiration for Morgan’s earliest works came from the animals themselves, as she worked to challenge viewers’ perceptions of her chosen medium. She then began to use animals more symbolically, referencing the cycle of life and death. More recently, Morgan has moved away from narrative and toward abstraction. Her creatively coiled snake sculptures celebrate the formal elements of her materials.

Polly Morgan

Polly Morgan

Polly Morgan

Boo Saville

Boo Saville (b. 1980) is an artist and printmaker whose painstakingly detailed ink drawings and paintings on canvas encompass two different styles of working – monochromatic depictions of life and highly pigmented abstraction. Since graduating from the Slade School of Art, London, in 2004, Saville has seen her work included in major private and museum collections both in the UK and internationally, including the Soho House Group, Collezione Maramotti and Murderme.

https://www.manifoldeditions.com/boo-saville/

Boo Saville

Boo Saville

Julia Thompson

Canadian artist Julia Thompson’s piercingly vulnerable practice flows with the material flux of living experiences – heartbreak, addiction, grief, desire – instinctively and unwillingly from the body. For her latest show, Valley of the Dolls at Dries Van Noten’s The Little House, Thompson returns to her adopted hometown of Los Angeles, a place sticky with memories of her youth. “I spent six years of my twenties there, swimming in this pool of people chasing fame, money, status,” reflects Thompson. “In LA, desire is so prevalent. And desire is scary and terrifying, especially when you’re a young woman living so much from your body.” Her exhibition asks, “What would it mean if women’s desire actually had a place in the world? What does it mean to desire something with that cruelty of knowing it will never be fulfilled?”

https://www.manifoldeditions.com/boo-saville/

Julia Thompson

Julia Thompson

Julia Thompson