Sylvia Radford

Another Place and Nowhere

Jackson's Painting Prize 2023, Bankside Gallery 2023
Oil
Canvas
76 x 60 cm

£700

“My paintings contend with notions of cultural duality and complex familial relationships. Introducing ideas concerning the inconsistency of memory, cultural and temporal markers, my work revolves around a conceptual layering of time and of navigating unstable and changing positions of self. The essential element in my work is a sense of self, be that depicted naturalistically, abstracted, or both.

Images of fleeting memory, contingent on information that is variegated and constantly edited is key. I develop ‘portraits’ that capture the strangeness and fragments of a remembered subjectivity framed around the unreliability of memory. Taking family photographs, I shift and reframe the imagery to take ownership of the narrative. Although the work is to some extent autobiographical, the way I develop the composite imagery creates possibilities that are both personal and universal.

My paintings emerge from a process of exploring the juxtaposition of different imagery from personal photographs, superimposed and sitting alongside abstract passages and line, echoing the cacophony of information reflected in post-modern culture. This painting navigates and negotiates positions of identity, acceptance and belonging, both culturally and within complex familial relationships.”