Amanda Wilkinson is pleased to present a new group of watercolours by Phoebe Unwin, made over the course of 2020. This body of work uses the delicacy, intimacy and immediacy of the medium to continue Unwin's explorations into communicating in pictorial form what a thought, a place or an object actually feels like.
These new paintings explore their medium's fluidity, the watery solution's natural tendency to seep into the paper and the colours into each other, creating a hazy multihued glow that confounds distinct definition. Each of these compositions features some form of line or barrier, a thin membrane suggesting an osmotic exchange between the colours on the paper; while also proposing a duality between intimations of a domestic place - a window, a flower - and a reflection on the elusive, organic nature of the paint itself.
Unwin's method of depiction is one of sensuous immediacy, but her paintings are not just subjective responses to private moments. Rather these works exude an outward sense of seductive and perplexing ambiguity.
Declan Long on Phoebe Unwin: 'Her paintings are barometers of interpersonal atmospheres. They measure moods - according to their own - registering subjective tensions between self and other consciousnesses' From the essay published in 'Phoebe Unwin : Field', 2018 on the occasion of Phoebe Unwin's solo exhibition at Collezione Maramotti, Reggio Emilia, Italy.
Phoebe Unwin exhibited recently at Towner Art Gallery, Eastbourne, UK (solo) and Moly-Sabata Foubndation Albert Gleizes, Sablons, France (group) and her work will be included a forthcoming group exhibition of British artists at the Sichuan Fine Arts Institute, China 2020/2021. Her work is included in many international private art collections and museums including Tate Gallery, London, Government Art Collection, UK, Arts Council of Great Britain, British Council Collection, Maramotti Collection, Italy, Southampton City Gallery, UK, Yale Center for British Art, USA and Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam.
