James Rielly

Bringing together recent oil paintings on linen as well as a set of 27 ceramic plates, Born With A Plastic Spoon, Fork And Knife In My Mouth, is the new solo exhibition by James Rielly. An animation from 16 watercolours has been specially made for the basement of the gallery which gave the exhibition its title.

The highly characteristic works of British painter James Rielly focus on the clichés, ideologies and metaphors of children. Creating subversive and at times surreal portraits of bright-eyed, schoolaged youths, Rielly addresses notions of societal tension and tradition. His most well-known series are Casual Influences (2000) and Sensible Ways (96-97), which consist of large-scale portraits inspired by stories and images taken from local newspaper articles. Through the act of highlighting certain features and roles in children, Rielly’s pieces bring out the dysfunctional nature of adults.

Rielly has shown his paintings in a number of solo exhibitions since 1983 including Musée des Beaux-Arts de Nantes, Nantes, France, Spencer Brownstone Gallery, New York, Fond Regional d’Art Contemporain Auvergne, Clermont-Ferrand, Centro de Arte de Salamanca (CASA), Salamanca, Spain, Centre d’Art Neuchâtel, Switzerland, among many others. In 1995 he was awarded a MOMART fellowship at Tate Gallery and in 1997 he was shortlisted for the Jerwood Prize and took part in the exhibition Sensation - YBA at the London Royal Academy. He has been Professor of Painting at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris, France since 2006.