Images from forthcoming solo exhibition SCREEN: Pip Dickens 29 June - 31 August 2013 Rugby Art Gallery, UK http://www.pip-dickens.com/screen.html
Pip Dickens is a painter concerned with visual perception, in particular, examining and challenging theories and methodologies of light and movement within the second dimension.Concepts of illusion and double meaning are recurring themes - The notion that we may receive two contrasting visual (or intellectual) responses to a single stimulant. She is interested in playing with ideas of extremes and visual confusion - a kind of "terrible beauty".
Her painting methodology is determined by the subject matter and often juxtaposes conventional painting techniques with innovative methods to create unusual surfaces, layers and textures. Depth and surface contrasts are particularly important in her work.
Her work draws upon many sources from natural phenomena to the darker elements of phantasmagoria, from opacity to transparency, from rhythms within music to pattern structures in nature, from cinematic devices to literary sources.Although common themes connect individual investigations, she dispels a singular stylistic approach in preference for innovating and testing new methodologies as a direct response to the subject matter
Background Pip Dickens has a Masters in Fine Art from The Slade School of Art (UCL, London) graduating in 2000. She studied her BA at Leeds Metropolitan University where she has been both a Visiting Lecturer and, from 2006 - 2008, a part-time lecturer on the BA (Hons) Fine Art degree course. She has also promoted visual and performance art whilst Marketing Officer at Leeds Metropolitan University Gallery & Theatre prior to embarking on her MFA. She was a part-time lecturer at Hull College of Art & Design and a Visiting Lecturer at Leeds College of Art & Design and the University of Lincoln.She regularly shows her work in London and has also exhibited in San Francisco at The Business Arts Council, at San Francisco Marina and with Alina Sandhu's private gallery Tangent Contemporary Art.
Prior to studying art (1978-1985) she worked extensively across the Middle East from the relatively young age of seventeen until her mid-twenties. She perceives this period of her life as critical to her outlook as an artist. Her first London solo show was with Cassian De Vere Cole at his Notting Hill gallery apartment in 2000. After the closure of his gallery she had numerous group and solo shows in London including ‘Bittersweet’ at Danielle Arnaud. ‘Oil and Stone’ at East 73rd Gallery and several exhibitions with Mayfair gallery, Sarah Myerscough Fine Art.
She was shortlisted for the NatWest Art Prize in 1997 and is the recipient of the Jeremy Cubitt Prize (Slade School of Fine Art). She also won the Edna Lumb Art Travel Prize in 1995 where she travelled to Iceland. She was a nominee for the Jerwood Contemporary Painters 2009 and shortlisted for the Celeste Painting Prize 2009.
Her recent, substantial, solo exhibition 'Toward the Light: Pip Dickens' at Cartwright Hall Art Gallery, Bradford is available as a touring show until end 2012. In 2010-2011 she was the Leverhulme Trust Award Artist in Residence at the University of Huddersfield, Department of Music.In addition to her painting practice she has worked with Ken Shuttleworth’s architectural practice, Make Architects, on a major integral public art commission for a prestigious development in London.
Her work has been purchased by a variety of private collectors including architects, commercial, leisure and financial institutions.
Pip Dickens
London
also Yorkshire
United Kingdom
Europe
