Lauren Kelly

Lauren works across painting, collage, photography and digital art. These different media allow her to layer, remix and recontextualise images and ideas, evoking a sense of dreamy retrospection, where memory bleeds into fantasy. Made since 2017, the work shows the evolution of Lauren’s visual language and her ongoing relationship with memory, desire and cultural aesthetics.

Her work looks at how memory distorts, how aesthetics can soothe or provoke, and how prettiness can exist without apology. Pink appears throughout as a kind of cultural code, embodying a kind of post-prettiness; a way of engaging, both critically and fondly, with beauty and the selective glow of nostalgia.

Gals, Lauren Kelly

Often mirroring digital culture, Lauren's work asks: what do we really recall when our memories are filtered through screens, trends and taste? By working with found imagery, personal archives, digital layering, and hand-rendered elements, Lauren collapses the boundaries between the real and the re-imagined, creating an in-between space where prettiness can be powerful, and where nostalgia leaves something raw behind.

Thanks, Lauren Kelly

Jess Swift

Jess primarily works in contemporary sculpture and abstract painting. Since recently finding out she is dyslexic, she has been exploring neurodiversity and alternative learning methods and how this can be amplified by highlighting the creation processes. Much of her work is expressive and is a reflection of her emotions and experiences.

In her sculptural work, Jess leaves marks, dents, scratches and even fingerprints to show how the work was formed. As well as this, all of her vessels see at least one hole, so the viewer can peer inside and see the support system put in place during the making.

Jess creates many layers in her paintings so people can immerse themselves in the progression of the work. The bright, contrasting colours evoke pleasant feelings, while also retaining the underlying experience of how her mind works. Jess encourages the viewer to partake in the process and to think about what the work means to them, rather than feeling forced to align their views with hers.

As a dyslexic artist, the writing alongside her work is often modified by many people, so no longer feels like her own. The physical creation and the art itself is her reclaiming ownership.