Young’s work proposes a reality in which the chaos of contemporary life – our scattered attention, pervasive uncertainties and dependence on technology for private reassurance and communal feeling – are not cause for despair, but are instead a possible resource. In Young’s guide for surviving this altered present, the disintegration of our established routines and imagined horizons clears the way for experimental dialogues, transhistorical affinities, unanticipated intimacies and a new attunement to beauty.
Her singular paintings emerged through digesting an omnivorous range of intellectual and cultural source materials, but were equally the product of many small, deceptively simple physical acts. It is this inconspicuous, diligent work which at once transforms her painting into a contemplative practice, and lends the images themselves their serene, introspective feel.
Young’s paintings invite us to linger over precisely detailed, almost photorealistic, facial features and angular structures, while her collages and redactions present us with enigmatic texts which reward re-readings, and aphorisms which under closer scrutiny shape-shift into private confessions.
- Rebecca Birrell
Since being awarded a first-class degree from Falmouth College of Art in 2012, artist Pippa Young has had seven solo exhibitions, the latest of which, Dancing on the Brim of Chaos, was exhibited in London on 10 - 20th June 2022.
