Mia Vallance

With unresolvable proximities and silence pregnant with an unyielding force of motion, the works of Mia Vallance problematize the ‘emptiness’ in spaces we move through, and occupy. The almost suffocating immediacy of her dense atmospheres, now join glimpses of exposed private moments and memories, as her pungency of color dissipates into sun bleached hues that, at times, completely fold into an unknowable depth of black. We are stifled by the nearness of things, yet so much is obscured, cut out, or left eternally out of reach. Stillness and motion compete to confuse distance and the orientation of perspective. And, an onset of staggered moments cut out structures with rapid marks. Elsewhere wide horizontal motions stretch scenes out into endlessness. Our sense of duration is dislocated from the familiar human-centred position we are used to, and offers the potential availability of other points of view. In the undulating dialogue between each painting of the show is the suggestion of ulterior lived experience and our own fallibility. Here the work gives us room to confront latent tendencies within Western thought - those that “confuse existence with the domain of what is accessible via the senses and projects the human need for meaning onto the vastness of the galaxies.”

Mia Vallance (b. 1998) is a London based visual artist working predominantly in oil painting, drawing and print-making.

The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue with an interview with the writer and artist Francesa Hussey, releasing on the night of the opening.