WAYWARD WOMEN OF CINEMA
Wayward Women of Cinema - an ongoing series - were first exhibited in:
Face to Face: A Celebration of Portraiture │ 8 June – 14 July │ Marlborough London
Faces of Mind │17 January – 11 April 2026 │Haus. Kunst. Mitte. Berlin
"These Wayward Women of cinema are a kind of love letter to female characters I'm especially drawn to and who have either in some way contributed to my work or who chime with it. I'm exploring what constitutes that which might be considered transgressive, aberrant behaviour, sometimes explicitly so but in other cases through implication, necessity or accusation. Some are willfully wayward, others are considered so simply by following their natures.
There's something about the heightened emotional register on a tiny scale that I find especially compelling. Rather than being a facsimile of a single frame, my interpretation always appears as one shot further in motion from the original source.
I've made these works mostly at home in London but also on residency in Berlin, where I made a group of 6. I was staying and working mere streets away from UFA studios in Babelsberg & each of those works were from films created in the studios and surrounding area.
When the first 21 were exhibited at Marlborough gallery London last year in Face to Face: a celebration of portraiture they were shown in a long line, giving them the impression of a continuous strip of film. I hung them in loose & overlapping groups.
The taxonomy shifts and expands as the project progresses...some were murderers, others could be said to have suffered a psychotic break, or could be accused of sexual deviation, were guilty of self possessed autonomy, were rule breakers who sought to strategise their way to forms of freedom."
"Marlborough London is pleased to present ‘Face to Face: A Celebration of Portraiture’, opening on the 8th of June 2023, to coincide with the re-opening of the National Portrait Gallery. Unfolding in thematic sections across two floors, the exhibition will explore how artists have pushed the limits of this genre from the early 20th century to the present day."
Artists included: Berenice Abbott, Eduardo Arroyo, Frank Auerbach, Richard Avedon, Francis Bacon, Bill Brandt, Brassaï, Lynn Chadwick, Lucian Freud, Roxana Halls, Maggi Hambling, Hugo Hamper-Potts, Naila Hazell, Alexander James, Alex Katz, R.B. Kitaj, Leon Kossoff, Francisco Leiro, Lorena Levi, Jacques Lipchitz, Darren Lynde-Mann, Henry Moore, Celia Paul, Christian Quin Newell, Larry Rivers, Liorah Tchiprout, Euan Uglow, Georg Wilson, Vicky Wright, Deanio X and Ki Yoong.
"faces of mind (17 January to 11 April 2026) brings together over 200 works on the subject of the head from 50 years, including painting, sculpture, drawing, and photography. The focus is not on portraits, but on an experimental field exploring form, emotion, and identity. Reduction, fragmentation, and distortion open new perspectives on what it means to be human. Gazes are questioned, masks become symbols of vulnerability, role, and self-determination.
The exhibition illustrates how artists express their inner selves and how viewers respond to them. The show brings also together artistic expression and insights from neuroscience, asking how emotion, memory, and perception arise in the brain and why faces move us so immediately. Many artists transform inner processes into visible forms, making emotions tangible that devy verbal description. Art thus becomes a resonance space between inner reality and outward expression.
Artists include:
Neo Rauch, Rosemarie Trockel, Victor Man, Thomas Schütte, Picasso, Gerhard Altenbourg, Kensise Anders, Amoako Boafo, Rainer Fetting, Olasunkanmi Akomolehin, Anton Henning, Sandra Vásquez de la Horra, Shunxiang Hu, Leiko Ikemura, Aneta Kajzer, Max Kaus, Georg Kolbe, Uwe Kowski, Katinka Lampe, Markus Lüpertz, Nanne Meyer, Christoph Niemann, Shanee Roe, Christoph Ruckhäberle, Max Uhlig."