Pleasure & Protest in Contemporary Figure Painting

Pleasure and Protest in Contemporary Figure Painting

Conceptual threads connecting these five artists center on exploring or re-situating domestic craft and decorative art practices in relation to painting the figure.

They employ strategies of pattern, gesture, and repetition through a range of materials and methods including watercolor, fresco-secco, wallpaper, clay, and embroidery.

Their works celebrate handwork and revel in the pleasures of tactile surfaces, decoration, and ornamentation.

Over forty years on from the groundbreaking Pattern and Decoration art movement, works by these five artists prompt fresh discussion about the renewed value of craft in contemporary art practices.

Collectively their work protests against hierarchies in subject and material, and their concerns in paint reflect current feminist discourse about cultural identity, representation, and making.

Guest Curator: Sara-Jayne Parsons, Director and Curator of The Art Galleries at TCU