Phoebe Unwin’s Hazy Recollections in London

Phoebe Unwin paints her soft-edged paintings from fragments of memory.

‘It’s not about any kind of personal storytelling,’ she told Apollo magazine. ‘I’m hoping to get to something which is more of the essence of that thing.’

The London-based artist’s exhibition, The Pointed Finger (2 June–15 July 2023), inaugurates Amanda Wilkinson Gallery‘s new space in Farringdon, London.

Using an extensive palette of vibrant colours, Unwin’s compositions depict forms that to and fro between recognisable objects, figures, and surroundings. Her paintings are rendered in thin layers of oil paint—a lengthy process—which gives the work an out-of-focus feel.

Critic Anthony Byrt has said ‘Unwin clearly understands that good painting has nothing to do with choosing between abstraction and figuration, and everything to do with managing the dialogue between materiality and image: a conversation where time, space, process, and the raw stuff of paint collide with the medium’s illusionist, performative possibilities.’

In Half View (2023), for instance, Unwin paints a form suggestive of a flower or a butterfly in marks of deep magenta and teal, held in the hands of a muted peach. Like the subject, Unwin’s title is ambiguous—she only offers us half a view of the image.

Instead, Unwin puts forward an interplay of vivid colours and hazy form (those thin layers of paint become more pronounced with every viewing) to render a thrilling collision of half-remembered moments.

Unwin completed an MFA at Slade School of Fine Art in 2005 and was shortlisted for the Max Mara Art Prize for Women in 2015.

Her works can be found in the collections of Tate Gallery, Arts Council, and Government Arts Collection, U.K., Collezione Maramotti, Italy and Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, The Netherlands, among many others.

Main image: Exhibition view: Phoebe Unwin, The Pointed Finger, Amanda Wilkinson Gallery, London (2 June–15 July 2023). Courtesy Amanda Wilkinson Gallery, London.