BEATRICE BOYLE AT FRONT ROOM, ST MARTINS LANE

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St Martins Lane is continuing its commitment to supporting emerging creative talent by hosting an exclusive exhibition of Beatrice Boyle’s latest works.  Beatrice graduated from Central Saint Martins in 2007, where she studied Fine Art Painting, and her latest series of works will be on display exclusively at Front Room during FRIEZE and throughout October.  Beatrice will be using Front Room as her studio throughout the exhibition, creating works live in the space.

 

The collection of canvases in her latest exhibition form an image of isolation. The sequence of portraits of anonymous figures, drawn from the pages of magazines, possess in the fixed stares and manic grins an almost grotesque quality.  

 

Through the textural qualities of paint, Boyle transposes the illusory deceit of the airbrushed image replacing it instead in this sense with the revelatory gestures of her painted surface. The removal and refiguring of this imagery alters the agenda of the images, where the series of closely cropped, awkward compositions are both denied their role of displaying clothing, which is their purpose and equally extracts them from within the context of the publication. 

 

The interplay between the images’ representational qualities and Boyle’s use of paint means that the images surface slips between figuration and abstraction and acknowledges in both respects the images artificial and deceptive qualities. Boyle’s aspiration for paint is manifest in the fleshy, veil like nature of her representation.

 

Boyle’s subject matter and portraiture in general serves as a foil through which to establish an exploration of paint. The defined palette and variations on use of line and white space recur in the series of chromatic arrangements. 

 

The effect of these works is to expose the competing value of the imagery based on their context and for Boyle’s use of paint as a means of transforming and testing the motivations of both the subject of her paintings and the painting as subject.

 

The exhibition will run at Front Room, St Martins Lane, 45 St Martin’s Lane, London from 9th – 29th October 2012.

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