Recently awarded second place in the 2019 Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize, Shelly Tregoning continues her exploration of identity and belonging in this new body of work. Through playful paintings and monoprints, she turns her focus to examine the inventive nature of the constructed self, and the gestural nuances that betray our real identity.
The packaging and presentation of the carefully constructed hyper-identity is now a very real social expectation, but at what cost?
The work brings together Shelly Tregoning's keen eye for the human figure and the myriad details of physical expression. By simply placing the figure alone in space, removing the context to create a 'non-portrait' where the identity and location of the sitter is both unknown and irrelevant, Tregoning has captured the telling subtleties of physical poise and performative tension, the unguarded moments of distraction, introspection and vulnerability.
This series of work sees Tregoning highlight the contradictions between the private and the carefully curated public version of ourselves, asking us to consider the weighty implications of subverting our genuine selves.
