Lights on

Location

Country: UK
City: London
Place: Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport, 100 Parliament Street

The immersive and epic vista of this painting unites land and sea, across which the artist depicts a group of women working in agriculture and aboard a ship. The sail billowing at the centre of the composition marks the transition between scenes; however, there is a commonality between the styling and beautiful clothing of the women in both scenes.

The women in Lily Kemp’s paintings are drawn from photographs in fashion magazines, she says: I’m interested in repurposing found images through the use of collage... What happens when you repurpose images of women from mass media? Can you truly create a new narrative or are you limited by the original context the image was found in?

Kemp’s distinctive painting style is informed by her use of acrylic paint which enables her to create smooth flat surfaces that replicate glossy magazines. The stylish and lustrous colours of the women’s clothes seem out of place with their surroundings. This contrast is important to Kemp, as it heightens the ways in which the societal focus on women’s bodies and their appearance often limits our expectations of their strength and abilities.

Lily Kemp graduated from BA Fine Art Painting, Wimbledon College of Arts, London in 2019. The same year, Kemp was awarded both the Lim Ai Fang Art Prize and The Woon Foundation Painting & Sculpture Prize. In 2021 she had her first solo exhibition at Galeria Duarte Sequeira, Madrid.

Places

Subjects

woman, costume & fashion

Materials & Techniques

acrylic (paint), canvas, acrylic painting

Artist

Lily Kemp (1997 - )

Title

Lights on

Edition

Date

2019

Medium

acrylic on canvas

Dimensions

height: 100.0 cm; depth: 200.0 cm

Acquisition

Purchased from New Contemporaries, August 2020

Provenance

New Contemporaries; from whom purchased by UK Government Art Collection, 18 August 2021

GAC number

19018