Lydia Blakeley graduated from Leeds College of Art in 2016 with a first class BA (Hons) in Fine Art. Her artistic practice explores contemporary culture through painted collage.
Blakeley attempts to blur the past and present, suspending the image in time, making the past more immediate and accessible. By drawing together disparate cultural reference from the 1950s until the present day, she pieces together fragments of history, forming spaces of living nostalgia. The painting process makes something concrete out of the pop-ephemera, the opposite of how the images would otherwise exist, and the end result challenging the expectation versus the reality.
£eisure presents a new body of work by Blakeley, developing the above interests in subversive and playful directions.
A critical text by Professor Derek Horton will accompany the exhibition.
Opening night: Thursday 16 March 5-7pm (Vernon Street Gallery)
The Pleasure of £eisure: A Rant on the (a)Gender of Painting
Thursday 30 March 5:30-6:30pm
A public engagement discussion event to explore Blakeley’s six new paintings. An opportunity for a pecha kuccha style talk and debate.
Image: Lydia Blakeley, Year of the Cat, 2017. Oil on linen, 40cmx50cm. Image courtesy of the artist and reproduced with kind permission.
- 17 March - 14 April 2017
- Vernon Street Gallery, Leeds College of Art