(b. 1995, Hitchin)
Beth Horner’s small-scale works invite close inspection. Navigating the relationship painting can have with digital interfaces, offcuts and fragments of personal imagery are compiled, cropped, compressed, and pieced back together in composed, claustrophobic documentations of domestic life. They ask us to slow down, take time and indulge in looking.
Recent works feature a tactile pulling apart of space as representation sits on top of bulging texture. The coarse painted surface insinuates a rugged unkemptness of the interiors. Pictorial elements become a box of trinkets modelled in excessive detail, ordered to tell a narrative as if furniture in a doll’s house.
Drawing on the in-between time of twilight, she transforms familiar suburban settings into sinister, uncanny dwellings. Glowing windows and apertures allude to hidden narratives and a warmth we are excluded from. The work's focus is in suspending liminal states, between day and night; physical and virtual; real and imagined; safety and horror. Whilst loaded with intricacies, Horner’s paintings hold many secrets.
“As Beth Horner explores the relationship between exterior and interior spaces, her depictions of domesticity remain intentionally ambiguous and fragmented in a similar way. Low-quality photographs snapped on her phone and reassembled through collage let her intentionally blur the boundaries between the physical and the virtual, with quick sketches and doodles adding humour and life to images … Through autobiographical images of the everyday enhanced and collaged, finding intimacy is seen as a constant process and the interior we create for ourselves as an ever-shifting state. As surfaces and screens overlay and pixel and pigment interact, so do meanings about what it means to exist within a space and the way in which our experiences can be constructed and deconstructed in between physical and immaterial planes” – Claire Mead, independent curator.
Education
2018 - 2020 Royal College of Art, MA Painting
2014 - 2017 Wimbledon College of Art, BA (First Class Honours) Fine Art: Painting
2013 - 2014 Camberwell College of Art, Foundation Diploma in Art & Design
Exhibitions
2019
Thresholds (Solo Show), 12th - 19th September, the Old Diorama Arts Centre, London
Brave New World (Group Show), 16th - 31st May - Justin Cook Art, London
2018
The Big Little Social (Group Show), 22nd October - Ole & Steen Kensington, London
Forty by Forty (Group Show), 9th April - 4th May 2018 - GX Gallery, London
Art Rooms Fair - 20th - 22nd January 2018, Meliá White House, London
FBA Futures (Group Show), 9th - 20th January 2018 - Mall Galleries, London
2017
Affordable Art Fair Stockholm - Will’s Art Warehouse, 12th - 15th October, Stockholm
There’s No Place Like Home (Group Show) – Will’s Art Warehouse, 29th July – 18th September, London
FLOCK 2017 (Group Show), 25th July - 25th August - GX Gallery, London
Capsticks Exhibition 2017 (Group Show) - Capsticks Law Firm, London
Wimbledon College of Arts Undergraduate Degree Show (Group Show), 15th - 24th June - Wimbledon College of Arts, London
The Currents of Identity (Group Show), 18th - 23rd April - Crypt Gallery, London
109 Nails (Group Show), 9th - 12th March - Copeland Gallery, Peckham, London
2016
Mind Map (3 Person Show), 3rd – 6th May - The Gallery on the Corner, London
Indigo Planning Offices, May 2016 - May 2017, Wimbledon, London
Capsticks Exhibition 2016 (Group Show) - Capsticks Law Firm, London
2014
Foundation Diploma Show, 12th – 17th May – Camberwell College of Art, London
Prizes
2017 Landmark Award (1st Place)
2017 Wimbledon Arts Society Award (1st Place)
2017 Jackson’s Open Painting Prize Longlist
2016 Indigo Planning Prize for Painting (2nd Place)
Publications
Art Rooms London 2018 Catalogue
Notable Collections
