Rhiannon Rebecca Salisbury
A British artist born in London, Rhiannon Rebecca Salisbury draws her artistic inspiration from photographic imagery of mass media, ranging from social media platforms to luxury brand advertising campaigns found in fashion and lifestyle magazines.
Leveraging luminous colours and luscious pigments and textures, she aims to question beauty standards that are commonly represented in the current public sphere, as well as the restrictive and uncomfortable boundaries that are inflicted on people by cultural paradigms of gender.
“In recent years, photographic imagery from fashion campaigns has had a huge influence on my practice as I have used and reimagined the compositions and images to recreate paintings from.”
About:
After graduating from Chelsea College of Art with an MA degree in Fine Art in 2016, Salisbury continued her study at the Turps Banana Painting Program and has been working as a professional artist since she left the program in 2018. Photographic imagery from fashion campaigns depicting fashion models with luscious body shapes and endangered animals appearing on the prints of clothing and accessories has had a huge impact on Salisbury’s artistic practice in recent years. Adopting bright colours and thick painting materials and resulting textures, Salisbury reinterprets the paradigms of photographic imagery and portraiture with connotations of standardised beauty standards within a contemporary urban landscape.
Rhiannon R. Salisbury, The Saccharine Inhumation, 2021. Acrylic on cotton stretched canvas, 180 x 160 cm.
Rhiannon R. Salisbury, Deflate, 2021. Acrylic on cotton stretched canvas, 40 x 30 cm.
Salisbury’s first solo exhibition Accessorize With A Tiger took place at Arusha Gallery in Edinburgh in 2018, followed by her second Rhiannon Salisbury at Darbyshire Ltd. in London in the same year. Thereafter, the artist has been widely exhibiting her works throughout London and is in close collaboration with Turps Banana studio.
Rhiannon R. Salisbury, Stuffed Monkey, 2019. Acrylic on gesso primed cradled panel, 41 x 30.5 cm.
Rhiannon R. Salisbury, Fly with Me, 2019. Acrylic on cotton stretched canvas, 40 x 30 cm.
The most recent body of work Salisbury completed was for a solo show entitled Femininity at Delphian Gallery in London in 2021. The assemblage of works dealt with different perspectives of femininity that Salisbury perceives in today’s urban landscape and the restrained and indisposed boundaries that were attributed to people by cultural parameters of gender. Salisbury took ideas from photographic imagery on social media and fashion magazines and deconstructed their inherent feminine features, therefore criticising the social landscape which fostered these cultural paradigms of gender.
Rhiannon R. Salisbury, Grooming Bitches, 2019. Acrylic on Fabriano watercolour paper 300 gsm, 70 x 50 cm.
Salisbury’s methodical artistic approach to pouring and painting allows the work to possess both painterly qualities and thick textures that are beautiful and grotesque simultaneously. The uncomfortable feeling when seeing the sticky and bloody pigments from the façade, in a way, mirrors the uncanny nature that female figures and femininity share and present in today’s society.
Rhiannon R. Salisbury, Jasmine, 2019. Acrylic on gesso primed panel, 40.5 x 30.5 cm.
Salisbury is currently working on a personal interpretation of a female protagonist who is fated to suffer at the hands of a patriarch. Set in a watery kingdom, the work deals with mythology and addiction and will be shown at Arusha Gallery in Edinburgh this coming September.
Selected Exhibitions
2021
Femininity, Delphian Gallery, London
2020
Tangled In The Blue, Purslane Arts, London
Antisocial Isolation, Delphian Gallery, Saatchi Gallery, London
House S1, Collective Ending, London
Ancient Deities, Arusha Gallery, Edinburgh
We Could Apply Our Lipstick, C&C Gallery, online
The Sinister Figures, The Bunker presented by BuuBuu Studios, online
Art On A Postcard: International Women’s Day Auction, The AllBright Mayfair, London
2019
Habitual Submission, solo show, Delphian Gallery, London
House Warming, Collective Ending HQ, London
A High Hang, curated by Christabel MacGreevy and Mark Connolly, London Pulse, Arusha Gallery, Miami
Small Is Beautiful XXXVII, Flowers Gallery, London
Ultra: Art For The Woman’s World Cup, presented by OOF Magazine at J. Hammond Projects, London
Art Car Boot Fair, OOF Magazine & J. Hammond Projects, London
Delphian Open Call, Delphian Gallery, London
ABSINTHE $1, curated by James Capper, Charlie Mills, and Billy Fraser, Spit & Sawdust, London
Selected Prizes and Residencies
2020
Collective Ending Inaugural Studio Member, London
SPACE Artists Grant
2019
Overall Delphian Open Call, winner
Artpiquer Painting Award, finalist
Absent Minded Residency, organised by Alia Hamaoui & Collective Ending, Galliac, France Overall Tagsmart Open Call, winner
All images are courtesy of the artist.
Danni Han
Emerging Artists Co-Editor, MADE IN BED