Mia Vallance
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Mia Vallance
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Tattoo Memory, 2020
Oil on canvas
130 x 80 cm
About this Work
Tattoo Memory was prepared with a highly absorbent surface preparation of rabbit skin glue and marble dust. In this technique, the first layer of paint stains the canvas, so the preliminary mark-making is semi permanent, and the paint cannot easily be erased or manipulated. In the spirit of permanency, she depicts band names and love hearts of tattoos she remembered from bodies she knew intimately, resembling ink in hues of Prussian Blue. These scratchy letters and illustrations are transposed from the body into a new landscape of a beach at night. Using the famous ‘Gerhard Richter Blur’ technique, Vallance wipes the paint across the canvas surface, disfiguring the tattoos and echoing the blurred effect of ink in printing and scanning.
About Mia Vallance
Mia Vallance is a visual artist living and working in London. She obtained a Bachelor's degree in Fine Art at Central Saint Martins in London and at the Ecole des Beaux Arts de Paris on an exchange programme. In 2020 she was shortlisted for the John Moores Painting Prize.
Vallance’s creates dreamlike paintings that drift between fragmented snapshots and abstract forms that are in a state of constant evolution. In her paintings, Vallance will allow something to morph into another thing entirely, giving control over to the instrument she manoeuvres. She does this by spilling turpentine onto the canvas and wiping the image away, allowing something else to emerge. Faces burst into their surroundings, bodies dissipate into colour, transcending their form by exploding, growing, dissolving and leaking. Vallance’s work functions almost like poetry or music: the viewer experiences its substance.
Education
2017 - 2020 Upper Second Class Honours - Bachelor of Fine Arts, Central Saint Martins, London
2018 - 2019 Erasmus exchange at Les Beaux Arts de Paris
2016 - 2017 Distinction - Foundation Diploma, Central Saint Martins, London
Awards & Prizes
2020 Shortlisted for the John Moores Painting Prize
2017 The Victor Chu award for fine art
Exhibitions
2020
Six Painters - The Koppel Project Central, Soho - Curated by me
Burnt out - Central Saint Martins
Savage 2020 - The Crypt Gallery St Pancras
2019
Activating Space - Calthorpe Garden Euston 74 Synonyms for Leaving - Beaux Arts de Paris Naima - Beaux Arts de Paris
2018
Who are we now - Livsey Exchange Peckham Tate exchange - Tate Modern Gallery