ROXANA HALLS

NEWS: Roxana Halls is among the subjects of UNLOCKING WOMEN'S ART: PIONEERS, VISIONARIES & RADICALS OF PAINT by P.L. Henderson.

Roxana Halls first institutional solo exhibition: DIE AUGEN DER ROXANA HALLS was held at HAUS KUNST MITTE, Berlin from 1st July - 1st October 2023, curated by museum director Dr. Anna Havemann.

Roxana Halls was among the invited artists at MARLBOROUGH GALLERY LONDON in FACE TO FACE: A CELEBRATION OF PORTRAITURE presented to coincide with the re-opening of the National Portrait Gallery from 9th July - 14th July 2023. Artists include Frank Auerbach, Francis Bacon, Lynn Chadwick, Lucian Freud, Maggi Hambling & Alex Katz.

NEWS: Roxana Halls co-curated & exhibited in LOST GIRLS conceived to benefit major UK charity War Child, held at Flowers Gallery, Cork Street, Mayfair, London from the 10-14th Oct 2023. Artists include Ai WeiWei, Maggi Hambling, Linder, Caroline Coon, Penny Slinger, Tracey Moffatt, Pam Hogg, Peter Howson, Owanto, Marie Harnett, Tewodros Hagos and her co-curators Rebecca Fontaine-Wolf and Nadia Duvall. Excerpts from fellow curator Dr. Marie-Anne Mancio's essay on Lost Girls can be read along with viewing the exhibition on ARTSY


ROXANA HALLS' work has been exhibited widely and is held in numerous private and public collections in the UK and internationally.

Halls is a London-based figurative painter who is best known for her images of laughing wayward women. Her work considers how self- surveillance circumscribes the repertoire of legitimate actions available to women and subverts these internalised rules of conduct. Frequently employing a wry humour and potent glamour to foreground her unsettling narratives, Halls’ paintings act as an antidote to passive spectatorship with their febrile interplay of queerness, class, gender, performance, freedom and refusal.

Halls has held numerous solo exhibitions including her first institutional solo presentation at Haus Kunst Mitte museum, Berlin in 2023, at The National Theatre, Beaux Arts Bath Gallery and Hayhill Gallery, Mayfair. Her work has been included in numerous group shows worldwide, most recently in Face to Face: A Celebration of Portraiture at Marlborough Gallery, London, Lost Girls, Flowers Gallery, London, with TW Fine Art in Palm Beach, Florida & Brooklyn, NY, the BP Portrait Award, The RA Summer Exhibition, The Royal Society of Portrait Painters and the Ruth Borchard Self Portrait Competition. She has been invited on three occasions to exhibit work at The Discerning Eye exhibition.
She has created works commissioned by and for Arts Council England funded exhibitions and supported museum and touring shows including Kapow! held at Stoke Potteries Museum and Dear Christine which toured the UK in 2019 and 2020. She has also curated exhibitions including Lost Girls at Flower's Gallery, London with InFems Art Collective in 2023 and Funny Ha Ha with Maddox Gallery in 2022.
Halls has been the recipient of several awards, including the Villiers David Prize, The Discerning Eye Founder's Purchase Prize, The Derwent Special Prize and the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Award.
She has written articles for and has been featured in many leading art magazines including Time Out, Modern Painters, Wallpaper*, Art of England, Artists & Illustrators, The Independent, The Sunday Telegraph, Galleries, The London Evening Standard, City AM, Airmail, Bust, Diva Magazine, FAD, Art North, Apollo Magazine and Trebuchet. She was commissioned to make portraits for BBC Arts’ production of Katherine Parkinson’s ‘Sitting’, aired in 2021 on BBC Four, featured in episode 1 of BBC1’s Extraordinary Portraits, aired in 2022, and was interviewed on BBC Woman’s Hour and Radio 4’s Only Artists.
Halls' is among the subjects of 'Unlocking Women's Art: Pioneers, Visionaries & Radicals of Paint' by P.L. Henderson to be released in November 2023.
Her portrait commissions include Alan Grieve CBE, Chairman of the Jerwood Foundation, Debbie Bliss MBE, John Simopoulos, Emeritus Professor.
She has curated exhibitions and contributed to symposia in the UK and been called upon to judge several art competitions.
A portrait of Roxana Halls was exhibited among a series of photographs of 30 women painters as part of the celebrations for the one hundredth anniversary of women’s suffrage in the Upper Waiting Hall in the Palace of Westminster in March 2019.
Her work is held in numerous private and public collections in the UK and internationally including The Discerning Eye Collection, St. Catherine's College Oxford, Brian Sewell, Katherine Parkinson, Bel Mooney, Rosa Bosch, Julie Burchill, Debbie Bliss MBE, Luke Jennings, author of the Killing Eve novels.
Her paintings created for the Stretching Room of the 2023 film Haunted Mansion are held in the Disney Archive collection. In 2020 her portrait of Horse McDonald was purchased for the permanent collection of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, which currently hangs in the Modern Gallery and her portrait of Katie Tomkins - Mortuary & Post Mortem Services Manager at West Hertfordshire NHS Trust has been acquired for the permanent collection of the Science Museum and was added to their permanent collection as part of their COVID-19 Collecting Project.

Roxana Halls' portrait of Horse McDonald was acquired for the permanent collection of the NATIONAL GALLERIES OF SCOTLAND and is currently on display in the Modern Portrait rooms of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery.

Roxana Halls' portrait of Katie Tomkins - Mortuary & Post Mortem Services Manager at West Hertfordshire NHS Trust has been acquired for the permanent collection of the SCIENCE MUSEUM as part of their Covid-19 Collecting Project. The portrait was selected from among over 15,000 Portraits for NHS Heroes worldwide to represent them.

Roxana Halls featured in episode 1 of EXTRAORDINARY PORTRAITS presented by Tinie first aired on BBC One 27th February at 6:30pm & repeated on 28th February at 11:10pm. Her painting from the show was recently exhibited at Turner Contemporary Gallery, Margate.

Roxana Halls curated & exhibited in FUNNY HA HA held at Maddox Gallery, Maddox Street, Mayfair London from the 1st Dec 2022 - 22nd Jan 2023. Artists included Tracey Moffatt, Harland Miller, Laurie Lipton, David Shrigley, Wilfred Wood, Stella Vine, Sarah Maple & Wayne White.

Roxana Halls created a new work in collaboration with the HOUSE of CAROLINA HERRERA & InFems for their first NFT collection for International Women's Day NIGHTCLUBBING

Roxana Halls was exhibited in 2022 in the group exhibition of international artists at HAUS KUNST MITTE, Berlin BODIES IN TROUBLE

A discussion with Catherine McCormack for UNIT London on Hélène Cixous and the influence on Halls work The Politics of Female Sexual Joy can be viewed via Halls YouTube channel.

Roxana Halls was in conversation with Nicola Jennings and The Colnaghi Foundation on laughter, self-portraiture and her work in relation to the art of Judith Leyster, Rembrandt, Goya and Bellini. COLNAGHI FOUNDATION online.

Interview with Caitlin Hart in INJECTION magazine Disrupting Politeness: In Conversation with Roxana Halls.

Interview with Frances Forbes-Carbine The noxious and the nourishing: Roxana Halls on women, violence and spectatorship for CULTURALL magazine.

AJ Kelly wrote on Roxana Halls work and its broader feminist interpretation in AFTER ELLEN magazine Laughing While Under Surveillance: the Art of Roxana Halls.

Roxana Halls was selected by Ruth Millington as one of 6 Women at the Forefront of Feminist Art Today alongside artists such as Shani Rhys James & Caroline Walker in RISE ART

Roxana Halls was invited by Tom Croft, originator of the Portraits For NHS Heroes project, to curate a selection of works for the Google Arts & Culture online gallery, in association with Paintings In Hospitals, Now Live. HEALTHCARE HEROES Halls selected images imbued with narratives of emotional power as one of the highlights from the Healthcare Heroes collection and wrote about a select few as well as her own portrait of Katie Tomkins for the project, alongside curations by art critic Kate Bryan, author Mark Haddon, artist Adebanji Alade and A&E nurse Harriet Durkin, the subject of the very first portrait by Tom himself.


Roxana Halls portrait by fine art photographer and historian Carla van de Puttelaar forms part of her series 'Artfully Dressed:Women in the Artworld' a series of portraits of prominent and promising women in the art world, including some of the world’s top female artists, gallerists and curators. Van de Puttelaar's portrait of Halls was one of 60 from the series to be exhibited in the art fair ‘TEFAF Fall 2019.

A portrait of Roxana Halls by filmmaker and photographer Barry Bliss, taken for his MAKE A MARK series of photographs of 30 women painters was exhibited as part of the celebrations for the one hundredth anniversary of women’s suffrage in the Upper Waiting Hall in the Palace of Westminster in March 2019.