Lot 444 - Lily Kemp - Blue Dream

Acrylic gouache on paper
2025
A6 (10x15cm)
Original Artwork
Signed on Verso
Curated by Hannah Tilson

About
With an underlying interest in exploring narratives touching on the fluidity of gender and identities; Lily Kemp’s paintings explore escapism, storytelling, the act of dressing up and playing out imagined roles.

Drawing from a range of visual references and written sources, through the process of collage she interweaves figures and images from popular culture alongside found images of landscapes and her own personal photographs. Looking in part at the relationships between popular culture, gender norms and our sense of self. More specifically at our relationship with fashion, how the way we choose to present ourselves can be considered an extension of ourselves and a way of exploring our identities outside of socially constructed binary categorisations.

The sense of scale in Lily’s paintings is often distorted and exaggerated with an interchangeable indistinct relationship between her figures and the space surrounding them, her landscapes seeming to breathe a life of their own. Scenes are often hyper idealised and fantastical; her figures living within these imagined worlds and dream like realities which are both familiar, yet also border on the performative and theatrical.

Education
2016 – 2019
BA Fine Art Painting, University of the Arts London, London

2015 – 2016
Foundation Diploma in Art and Design, University of the Arts London, London

Solo and Duo Exhibitions
2024
Inner Voyage Out (duo show with Minyoung Kim), Over the Influence, Hong Kong

2023
Taking flight, Taymour Grahne Projects, London

2022
Cry me a river, Galeria Duarte Sequeira, Seoul

Selected Group Exhibitions and Art Fairs
2024
International Women’s Day Auction, Art on a Postcard, London
New Now, Guts Gallery, London

2023
Duo presentation with Over the Influence at Kiaf Seoul

2022
Group presentation with Galeria Duarte Sequeira at Art Busan
Intimacy, Taymour Grahne Projects, London
What Now?, PM/AM gallery, London
Assemble, V.O Curations, London

2021
Confluence of Tongues, Grove Collective, London
Solo presentation with Galeria Duarte Sequeira at ARCO Madrid
Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2020, South London Gallery, London
Get a load of this, Daniel Raphael Gallery, London

2020
Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2020 Digital Platform
That’s How The Light Gets In, AucArt Virtual Gallery
The Recent Graduates Exhibition, The Battersea Spring Affordable Art Fair, London
Herstory - Women in Art, Maddox Gallery, London
The Signature Art Prize, Bankside Hotel, London

2019
The Clyde & Co Art Award, St Botolph Building, London
The Woon Foundation Painting & Sculpture Prize, Gallery North, Newcastle upon Tyne
BA Degree Show, Wimbledon College of Arts, London
Everyday Forms, Four Corners Gallery, London
For Love or Money, Copeland Gallery, London

2017
Spilt Milk, Pop up venue, London

2016
Foundation Show, Camberwell College of Arts, London

2015
Young Art, Royal College of Art, London