These artists utilise the immediacy and directness of the drawn line to document experience, lived or imagined, giving form to memories and private thoughts. Taking inspiration from literature, popular culture and folklore, the artists use drawing to tell stories about age, sexuality, gender and politics. The works incorporate assemblage and collage, testing the boundaries of drawing as it moves into three dimensions. Traditional craft techniques, such as embroidery and quilting, are employed as a conceptual strategy with which to explore the construction of female identity. Exploring states of being, both interior and exterior, the artists tell stories that are as personal as they are universal.
Born 1969 Worcestershire, Emma Talbot lives and works in London. Graduated from Birmingham Institute of Art & Design and the Royal College of Art.
Talbot's work explores the personal terrain of interior thought and feeling, and casts this subjectivity into the context of prevalent contemporary concerns; such as our relationships with technology, with nature, power structures etc. Hand-drawn, intuitive language is the basis of her visual imagery. She combines image, text, motif and materiality to depict the experiential world of a female protagonist, based on an internalised idea of herself, who is searching for meaning. Talbot is interested in articulating ideas as formed in the mind’s eye and extends this through large painted silk hangings, drawing, 3D forms, installation, sound and animation.
Her work is held in public and private collections including Arts Council Collection; The British Council Collection; The David Roberts Collection, London; Permanent Collection AGWA Perth, Perth; and Daniel and Florence Guerlain Collection, Paris.
Selected solo exhibitions include Whitechapel Gallery, London (2022); Collezione Maramotti, Reggio Emilia (2022); Emma Talbot, Kunsthaus Centre d'art Pasquart, Biel (2021); When Screens Break, Eastside Projects, Birmingham (2020); Emma Talbot, DCA Dundee, Dundee (2020); Emma Talbot, The Human Experience, Kunsthalle Giessen, Giessen (2020); Sounders of The Depths, GEM Kunstmuseum voor Actuele Kunst, The Hague (2019); Emma Talbot: The Light Is On, Petra Rinck Galerie, Düsseldorf (2019); and Stained With Marks Of Love, Arcadia Missa, New York (2017). Selected group exhibitions include Starhawk's Backyard, Galerie Onrust Amsterdam (2020); From the Inside Out, Drawing Room, London (2018); Journeys Through the Wasteland, Turner Contemporary, Margate (2018); and Virginia Woolf, Tate St Ives and touring (2018).
Awards include winner of the 8th Max Mara Art Prize for Women, in association with Whitechapel Gallery and Collezione Maramotti.
Born 1988 Toronto, Athena Papadopoulos lives and works in Hull. Graduated from BFA Contemporary Art Theory and Visual Art at University of British Columbia (2011); and MFA, Fine Art Practice at Goldsmiths, University of London (2013).
Papadopoulos’ practice focuses on challenging traditional representations of the body, gender and sexuality by creating abstract forms which cross the real and imaginary world. Her work involves a variety of media, especially found objects which are then assembled together.
Selected solo exhibitions include Cain and Abel Can’t and Able, MOSTYN Museum, Llandudno (2020); Athena Papadopoulos, Emalin, London (2020); The Apple Nun, Liebaert Projects, Kortrijk (2019); Holy Toledo, Takotsubo!, curated by CURA, Kunsthalle Lissabon, Lisbon (2019); A Tittle-Tattle-Tell-A-Tale Heart, Humber Street Gallery, Hull (2019); The Smurfette, Emalin (London, UK, (2017); Belladonna‘s Muse, curated by Samuel Leuenberger, CURA Basement Roma, Rome (2017); Wolf Whistles, Shoot the Lobster, New York (2016); Zabludowicz Invites: Athena Papadopoulos, Zabludowicz Collection, London (2015); Honeymoon in Pickle Paradise, The Landmark Hotel, London (2014); and OUT COLD, OTHER Projects, Berlin (2014). Selected group exhibitions include The Condition of Being Addressable, ICA, Los Angeles (2021); Future City Shining the Eternal Now, Museum of Contemporary Art, Toronto (2020); World Receivers, Zabludowicz Collection, London (2019); The Marvellous Cacophony, curated by Gunnar B. and Danielle Kvaran, 57th October Salon, Belgrade (2018); Streams of Warm Impermanence, David Roberts Art Foundation, London (2016); Wild Style, Peres Projects, Berlin (2016); Bloody Life, Herald St., London (2016); From Transhuman to South Perspectives, ROWING, London (2016); Dear Luxembourg, Nosbaum Reding, Luxembourg (2015); Bloomberg New Contemporaries, ICA, London (2014-2015); Bloomberg New Contemporaries, World Museum, Liverpool (2014).
Awards include being shortlisted for the Max Mara Art Prize, Whitechapel, London x Collezione Marmotti (2018); and Peter Lloyd Lewis Studio Award, Chisenhale Art Place (2015).
Born 1988 Paris, Marie Jacotey lives and works in Marseille. Graduated from Royal College of Art, London (2013), and from the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs, Paris (2011).
Jacotey’s work draws inspiration from the gathering of people together, the expression of emotions in their many and varied interactions and the contexts and details in which these engagements take place - architecture, landscape, or place; picking out wallpaper, furniture, clothes, and zooming in further to detail pattern, patina, texture... Her works – though insistently manual in their making: paintings on plaster and dust sheets, pencil drawings, soft pastel on Japanese paper, sewing and fabric - make use of perspectives that reference the world of cinema and slow-mo, the photographer’s point and shoot.
Her work is held in the collection of the Victoria & Albert Museum, London.
Selected exhibitions include Daylighting, Ballon Rouge Collective, Brussels (2020); Blue Fear, Hannah Barry Gallery, London (2020); You pinned me down like a butterfly on the wall, Ballon Rouge Collective, New York (2020);.Superzoom, 12 Rue Vauvilliers, Paris (2019); Absinthe, Spit & Sawdust, London (2019); Wild Love Me, NADA art fair, Miami (2018); and Goodbye Darkness, Ballon Rouge Collective, Paris (2018).
Awards include featuring her first animation short movie, co-directed with and written by Lola Halifa-Legrand, Blue Fear, as part of the official Cannes Festival Competition 2020.
Nilbar Güreş (born 1977, Istanbul) lives and works in Istanbul and Vienna. Studied Fine Art at Marmara University, Istanbul (2000) and Fine Art at Malerei und Grafik, Akademie der bildenden Künste, Vienna (2002). Select solo exhibitions include OVERHEAD, Lentos Kunstmuseum Linz (2018); Jumping Bed and Female Lovers, Galerie Tanja Wagner, Berlin (2018); Heartache of a Stone, Galerie Martin Janda, Vienna (2017); and Open Phone Booth, The Israeli Center for Digital Art, Holon, Israel (2016). Select group exhibitions include From the Inside Out, Drawing Room, London (2018).
