Jessica Warboys

Warboys (b.1977, Wales) is considered as one of the leading emerging British artists of her generation. The auction’s painting ”Folded Pigment 1” is part of the ongoing “Sea Paintings” series, which is central to the practice of Jessica Warboys. The series plays with the notion of ritual, performance, nature and consequence. The artist realises her “Sea Paintings” on the Zennor coast, near St Ives, where she emerges the canvas in the seawater, allowing the waves and the wind to mix the raw mineral pigments that have been applied by hand to damp folded canvases. Finally the artist drags the canvases across the sand, leaving a trace of the movement of the artist in the canvas. The combination of the raw mixed pigments with the wind and the waves produces vivid final pieces. They are the result of a long process of walking, her relationship with the landscape and her practice of painting as a poetic performance.

Employing a variety of media including film, sculpture, ceramic, photography, found objects and sea paintings, Jessica Warboys concerns her practice with historical, mythical and fictional collective memories. At the foundation of her analysis of collective memories, the artist builds a new universe in which the viewer can reconsider the past and constructed knowledge. While her works present a performative aspect, the artist does not consider herself a performing artist. Rather, she is interested in the tension at the junction and transition between ritual, performance and the artistic process.

Warboys graduated from Falmouth’s BA(Hons) Fine Art course in 2001 and went on to gain an MA in Fine Art from the Slade School of Art, London in 2004. She has exhibited widely nationally and internationally with solo exhibitions at Museum Leuven, Belgium (2015), Laing Gallery, Newcastle (2014), Outpost, Norwich (2014), Spike Island, Bristol (2013), Bielefelder Kunstverein, Germany (2012), Nomas Foundation, Rome (2012), Cell Project Space, London (2011) and Le Crédac, Ivry-sur-Seine, France (2011). Her work has been included in many group exhibitions and screenings at various venues. Including Whitechapel Gallery and South London Gallery, dOCUMENTA 13 in Kassel, Germany, Centre Pompidou in Paris, Galerie Andreas Huber in Vienna, and most recently in British Art Show 8, which tours UK venues from 2015-17. Her work has been collected by the Centre Pompidou and Centre National des Art Plastiques in Paris and also by a number of other French institutions. She is represented by Gaudel de Stampa, Paris.