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Rhiannon Salisbury

Bio

Rhiannon (b. 1984, lives and works in London) recently graduated from the Turps Banana Painting Program, having completed an MA in Fine Art at Chelsea College of Art. Her first solo exhibition, ‘Accessorise With A Tiger’, took place at Arusha Gallery in Edinburgh in 2018, with her second opening at Darbyshire Ltd. in London on Dec 6th (runs to March 6th 2019). She has been involved in group exhibitions at COB Gallery, Subsidiary Projects, Flowers Gallery, A.P.T. Gallery, Transition Gallery, Saatchi Gallery, Cookhouse Gallery (London) and Gift Shop Gallery (Seattle). She undertook the Panorama Residency in Guadalajara in 2015/16, the Rimbun Dahan Residency in Malaysia in 2014 and an Art Program Scholarship in Rome in 2012. Rhiannon has been awarded the Darbyshire Prize for Emerging Artists (2018) and the John Hoyland Scholarship, Chelsea College Of Art (2015).

Statement

I use my paintings as a tool to investigate the role of women within contemporary culture. Using colour, form, and composition as language, I am investigating western standards of beauty and the idealisation of femininity, within the field of advertising.

I deliberately work with found imagery from aspirational fashion and lifestyle magazines, focusing on the modelling campaigns of the most luxurious brands. Composition’s and imagery are tweaked to distort and expose my dystopian perception of this capitalist dream.

I hope that the reinterpretation of the advertisements through painting opens up a dialogue where one can re-look at the structure of ideas and references used in each highly constructed and saturated image.

Using gestures which explore the borderland between a substance that is alluring in its thick luscious texture, and grotesque in its ability to turn to chaotic mush, my paint handling and synthetic colour palette seeks to strike a balance that intends to at once allure and repel the viewer.