Swimming Badges

Location

Country: UK
City: England
Place: Manchester, DCMS Hub

Claire Dorsett paints what she sees around her - often things that most people might consider insignificant but which have meaning to her. Her colour palette is straightforward. She also works with markers and makes her painting in similar sorts of colours, almost never mixing them. Her work titles have an honesty about them that resonate with this colour palette, and are often simply a verbal repetition of the visual, as in this work Swimming Badges. ‘The obvious thing’ says Dorsett ‘is often not that obvious [and] the assumption is the mother of all mess-ups’. In her works Dorsett invites viewers to apply the same curiosity to the world as a child might, without baggage or assumptions. Her titles refuse to lead the viewer toward any particular way of seeing the work  ‘I will give you the bare bones,’ she says ‘and the rest is up to you’. Her works are often painted quickly but using what curator Jes Fernie has described as a  ‘a tight visual language’. This way of working conveys an aura of confidence in Dorsett’s paintings that ask the viewer to take a closer look at what might seemingly be a mundane-looking object. ‘I think’ says Dorsett ‘you can impart a lot more by pointing at the things you are looking and thinking about, as well as through storytelling rather than deconstructing...perhaps the work is activated by this dialogue, perhaps that dialogue is actually the work.’

Claire Dorsett graduated with a BA (Hons) in Fine Art Painting at The University of Brighton in 2007 and an MFA Painting at The Slade School of Fine Art in 2010. Based in Manchester, recent solo exhibitions of her work have been held at Workplace Foundation, Gateshead (2019); FRONT, STOCK Gallery, Manchester (2018); Title.date.duration, Manchester (2017); and George and Jørgen Gallery, London (2011). Her work has been shown in group exhibitions including at Workplace Foundation, Gateshead; Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester; and Oceans Apart Gallery, Salford (all 2022): TAF/The Art Foundation, Athens; and ICW, Blackpool (2017); HOME, Manchester (2016): BAK, Utrecht, Netherlands (2015); and Space K Gwacheon, Seoul and Gwangju, South Korea (2012).

Places

Subjects

Materials & Techniques

acrylic (paint), canvas, acrylic painting

Artist

Claire Dorsett (1985 - )

Title

Swimming Badges

Date

2020

Medium

acrylic on canvas

Dimensions

height: 25.0 cm; width: 25.0 cm

Acquisition

Purchased from Division of Labour, March 2022

Provenance

Division of Labour; from whom purchased by UK Government Art Collection, 22 March 2022

GAC number

19059