About the work

I’ve loved working with charcoal to create a series of window drawings – this is one of them. It’s my response to a view from home during the first lockdown. Here I was thinking about weight and containment – the spindly curling legs of a desk appearing to almost hold up the chunky and dense forms of the outside.

Date and country of birth

1979, GB

About the artist

Born 1979 Cambridge, Phoebe Unwin lives and works in London.  Graduated from BA Fine Art, Newcastle University (2002); and MFA Slade School of Fine Art (2005).

Unwin's paintings shift between figuration and abstraction creating a personal register of images and marks based on observations and constructs of memory. Using a variety of media, from oil and acrylic paint to pastel and graphite, she emphasises a material relationship with form and colour.

Her work is held in public and private collections including Tate, London; Maramotti Collection, Reggio Emilia; Arts Council Collection UK; British Council Collection; Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam; Southampton City Art Gallery; The Government Art Collection, UK; and The Yale Centre for British Art, New Haven.

Selected solo exhibitions include Iris, Towner Gallery, Eastbourne (2019); Field, Maramotti Collection, Reggio Emilia (2018); and Pregnant Landscape, Amanda Wilkinson Gallery, London (2018). Selected group exhibitions include Pericolante, Arcade, London and Vortic Online Platform (2020); Le realtà ordinarie, Banca di Bologna (2020); and Cet Elixir, Moly-Sabata Fondation Albert Gleizes, Sablons (2019).

Awards include being shortlisted for the Max Mara Art Prize for Women Sixth Edition in Collaboration with the Whitechapel Gallery (2015); and being awarded a Philip Leverhulme Prize from The Leverhulme Trust (2012).