The Painted Room: Curated by Caroline Walker

Curated by Scottish artist Caroline Walker, The Painted Room brings together UK-based artists exploring the interior through a spectrum of distinctive styles, capturing moments of dramatic tension in the domestic sphere, quiet scenes steeped in nostalgia, and gestural, impressionistic representations of life behind closed doors. As an artist concerned with domestic spaces and the underrepresented labour of women in the workspace, Walker has assembled a group of artists whose work resonates with her own, creating a new dialogue on the role of the interior in contemporary painting.

The artists in The Painted Room all approach the wide-ranging subject of interiors in their work using distinctive approaches to paint handling and individual creative voices, from the naturalistically observed spaces described in the paintings of Anna Freeman Bentley, Mike Silva, Caroline Walker and Elena Rivera-Montanes to Gareth Cadwallader’s highly constructed and meticulously executed interiors.

The spaces created by Nick Goss, Minyoung Choi, Andrew Cranston, Cece Philips and Hettie Inniss sit somewhere perhaps in the middle, while employing elements of realism, they also appear to materialise from a place of memory and the imaginary. 

Walker notes, “The paintings in the exhibition explore the possibility of the interior; as a place of refuge from which to view the outside world, a personal space for memory and longing through the objects which inhabit it, or a site of constructed reality.” 

The interiors range from private scenes of homelife, a film set located in a museum that was once a house, the interior of a cafe and other much less locatable spaces, some suggesting the idea of an interior rather than anywhere specific. What they all share though is a sense of the everyday, of interiors that envelop the stuff of daily life, and the purpose of capturing this in paint is either to document, elevate, imbue with narrative or transform the way we see these spaces. 

Participating artists:
Gareth Cadwallader
Minyoung Choi
Andrew Cranston
Anna Freeman Bentley
Nick Goss
Hettie Inniss
Cece Philips
Elena Rivera-Montanes
Mike Silva
Caroline Walker

A new publication will be published on the occasion of this exhibition, available in December 2023.

About Caroline Walker

Caroline Walker (b. 1982, Dunfermline, UK) lives and works in London (UK). She completed her MA at the Royal College of Art, London (UK) in 2009 and her BA at the Glasgow School of Art (UK) in 2004. Recent solo exhibitions include: Women Observed, K11, Shanghai (CN); Lisa, Stephen Friedman Gallery, London (UK); Caroline Walker: Birth Reflections, The Fitzrovia Chapel, London (UK); Windows, KM21, Kunstmuseum, The Hague (NL); Women’s Work, Midlands Arts Centre, Birmingham (UK); Nearby, GRIMM, New York, NY (US).

This year, Walker has been part of the following group exhibitions: Real Families: Stories of Change, Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge (UK); Anholt, Makinson, Mortimer, Smith, Walker: New Positions in British Painting, Telegraph Foundation, Olomouc (CZ); Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, Royal Academy of Arts, London (UK); PUBLIC PRIVATE, Pond Society, Shanghai (CN); Traces of Displacement, Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester (UK); Finding Family, Foundling Museum, London (UK). 

Works by Caroline Walker can be found in many international collections including: Aïshti Foundation (LB); Arts Council of England (UK); AkzoNobel Art Foundation (NL); The Fleming Collection (UK); He Art Museum (CN); High Museum of Art, GA (US); Huamao Beijing Foundation (CN); Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami, FL (US); ING Collection (NL); Jimenez-Colon Collection (PR); Kistefos Museum (NO); Kolon Group Collection (KR); Kunstmuseum, The Hague (NL); Longlati Foundation (CN); Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (US); Museum Voorlinden (NL); National Museum Wales (UK); OUTSET/RCA acquisitions, Royal College of Art (UK); Pérez Art Museum Miami, FL (US); Pond Society (CN); The Rachofsky Collection, TX (US); Rosenblum Collection (FR); Saatchi Collection (UK); Shetland Islands Council (UK); Sifang Art Museum (CN); The University of Cambridge (UK); The UK Government Art Collection (UK); University of Warwick (UK); Woong Yeul Lee Collection (KR) and Yale University Art Gallery, CT (US) among others.