Alexis Soul-Gray (b.1980, UK), lives and works in Devon, UK. She completed a BA in Drawing from Camberwell College of Arts, London (2003), the Postgraduate Drawing Year at The Royal Drawing School in 2007, and most recently an MA in Painting from the Royal College of Art, London (2023). Alexis Soul-Gray is represented by Bel Ami in the US.
Through a series of interventions and abstractions, Alexis Soul-Gray masterfully reinterprets the everyday reproduced image to explore nurture, dereliction and the mother archetype in relation to trauma, presenting a detailed and beautiful visual metamorphosis of recollections. Through painting, drawing and collage, echoes of the past are played out by the reparative act of collecting, selection and re-making of public archival materials such as books, magazines, postcards and other ephemera.
At times disjointed and muddled, the visuality of her works reflects the process of reckoning with the past and the memories she has lost and yearns for. Taking formulaic, idealised and clichéd images of women and children she tears, cuts, rubs, scratches and bleaches them, as she imbeds them within fragmented layers, resulting in works that speak of the universal experience of loss, the mother and nostalgic longing.
A direct manifestation of a shattering personal trauma, the act of collecting and assemblage provides Soul-Gray with the opportunity to reimagine the idealised and faked images that permeate our culture. Destructive, reparative and hopefully melancholic, Soul-Gray’s work presents a watchful gaze over these past lives as she re-writes their narrative through her tender transformation of the found image.
Through a series of interventions and abstractions, Alexis Soul-Gray masterfully reinterprets the everyday reproduced image to explore nurture, dereliction and the mother archetype in relation to trauma, presenting a detailed and beautiful visual metamorphosis of recollections. Through painting, drawing and collage, echoes of the past are played out by the reparative act of collecting, selection and re-making of public archival materials such as books, magazines, postcards and other ephemera.
At times disjointed and muddled, the visuality of her works reflects the process of reckoning with the past and the memories she has lost and yearns for. Taking formulaic, idealised and clichéd images of women and children she tears, cuts, rubs, scratches and bleaches them, as she imbeds them within fragmented layers, resulting in works that speak of the universal experience of loss, the mother and nostalgic longing.
A direct manifestation of a shattering personal trauma, the act of collecting and assemblage provides Soul-Gray with the opportunity to reimagine the idealised and faked images that permeate our culture. Destructive, reparative and hopefully melancholic, Soul-Gray’s work presents a watchful gaze over these past lives as she re-writes their narrative through her tender transformation of the found image.
November 12, 2024
