Emily Wolfe | Field Work
Past exhibition
Meakin + Parsons, in partnership with Hannah Payne, is excited to announce a forthcoming solo exhibition of new paintings by the gallery’s first artist in residence: Emily Wolfe | Field Work opening from 9th September – 1st October 2022. Artist Emily Wolfe (b.1972 NZ) lives and works in Oxford. Having moved from New Zealand to London in 1998 to study for a Masters in Fine Arts at the Slade School of Fine Art, University College London, the artist has since exhibited internationally, and currently lives in Oxford. Emily began her residency at Meakin + Parsons when the gallery opened in early 2022. She has been working in the gallery’s dedicated artist studio space, taking advantage of the high ceilings and wide walls to make new, large scale works for her solo show in September. “These paintings begin with paper collages. The raw material for them comes from photocopies of prints of 18th century landscape paintings, from coloured paper, cellophane, cardboard, or any other scraps of paper or detritus I might find in my studio. The paintings make reference to the process of recording archaeological excavations, something I became interested in after a period spent working on a variety of sites with the Museum of London Archaeology. The two processes of painting and excavating are connected in my mind. Each process involves layering and stratification and the consequent emergence of narratives.” (Emily Wolfe, 2022) Since excavation depends on subtraction, it could be regarded as the inverse of Wolfe’s painting process, but the intention in her current work is to hold these opposing ideas in equilibrium. By overlapping sheets of paper, the artist’s aim is simultaneously to disrupt and affirm the image and the nature of its construction as a series of intersecting planes. Emily Wolfe’s works possess a disconcerting quietness – an uncertainty and mystery that implies there is more to them than meets the eye. Through painting beautiful, yet innately unsettling works, Wolfe addresses the “subtle interplay between privacy and exhibitionism as well as realism and the fantastic.” (Ghent Onetwenty Gallery, Emily Wolfe: Through a Glass Darkly, exhibition catalogue)
