Lisa Milroy was born in Vancouver, Canada in 1959 and lives and works in London and Kent. Still life is at the heart of Milroy's practice. In the 1980s, her paintings featured ordinary objects depicted against an off-white background. Subsequently her imagery expanded to include depictions of objects within settings, as well as landscape, architecture, people, textiles and patterns.
Read MoreAs her approaches to still life diversified, so did her manner of painting, giving rise to a range of stylistic innovations. Throughout her practice, Milroy has been fascinated by the relation between stillness and movement, and the nature of making and looking at painting.
Recent solo exhibitions include If the Shoe Fits/Bien dans ses pompes, FRAC Occitanie Montpellier, France (2021); Exchange – Paintings by Lisa Milroy, White Conduit Projects, London (2021); tak__ing the side of things, m2 Gallery, London (2020-21); Same and Different – Paintings by Lisa Milroy, One Off Contemporary Art Gallery, Nairobi, Kenya (2021); Wearing and Staring: YANAGI Miwa and Lisa MILROY, Fukuoka Art Museum, Fukuoka, Japan (2020); Ensemble/ Together – Paintings by Lisa Milroy, FRAC Occitanie Montpellier, France (2020) and Here & There – Paintings by Lisa Milroy, Parasol unit for contemporary art, London (2018).
Recent group exhibitions include 40 Years of The Corridor, National Gallery of Iceland, Reykjavik (2023); Found Cities, Lost Objects: Women in the City, an Arts Council Collection touring exhibition curated by Lubaina Himid, Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, Southampton City Art Gallery, Royal West of England Gallery, Bristol and Leeds Art Gallery (2022-23) and A Century of the Artist's Studio: 1920 – 2020, Whitechapel Gallery, London (2022). Milroy won the John Moores Painting Prize 1989 and was elected to the Royal Academy of Arts in 2005. She was Artist Trustee at Tate from 2013 to 2017 and Liaison Trustee to the National Gallery from 2015 to 2017. She has taught at the Slade School of Fine Art, UCL since 2009. In 2015, Milroy initiated_Hands On Art Workshops_, a programme of practical art workshops for primary and secondary school students in Kakuma Refugee Camp, Kenya, working with UNHCR, the UN refugee agency. Milroy's work is held in public collections, including Tate, London; FRAC Occitanie Montpellier, France; Metropolitan Museum of Art, USA; Kunstmuseum Bonn, Germany and Fukuoka Art Museum, Japan.
Text courtesy Kate MacGarry.
