Miranda Boulton - ‘Ghosts and Flowers’
Cynthia Corbett Gallery at Gallery 67, York Street, London, W1H 1QB
28 October – 2 November 2024, Open daily 11am – 6pm
Artist Reception, 30 October, 6 – 8.30pm RSVP: cristina@thecynthiacorbettgallery.com
Miranda Boulton in conversation with Cynthia Valianti Corbett, 2 Nov, 2 – 4pm RSVP
"Boulton expressively reinterprets and reinvigorates the genre of floral still life painting by referencing and combining the traditions of Still Life painting and Abstraction within her own mix of vigorous and delicate marks. The Still life genre reminds us of the transience of life and the fragility of nature. Her cut bouquets reflect mans manipulation of nature and hint at its consequences. Historically floral still life painting has been seen as slight and feminine, however, Boulton is not interested in her paintings being gendered, her flowers have strength and muscle, they are untethered with backgrounds void of reference. She sees them as living organisms in a state of becoming, in their own orbits.
‘When thinking about still life, a set of characteristics immediately come to mind. Domestic backdrops, a focus on the present moment, and – perhaps above all – an emphasis on the beauty of everyday objects: the sensuous feel and sheen of flowers and fruit. A certain tenderness and inwardness, a preference for melancholic pronouncements on the ephemerality of life. Miranda Boulton’s still life, however, at once radically depart from these norms and remain productively tethered to the genre’s rich history. They are wayward and wild, suffused with an energy that feels impervious to death, and dense with art historical citations.”
Excerpt from Acts of Cross Pollination: Miranda Boulton’s Still Life by Dr Rebecca Birrell, Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in the School of Art History at the University of St Andrews. She was formerly the Curator of 19th and 20th Century Paintings and Drawings at The Fitzwilliam Museum, University of Cambridge.
The show title ‘Ghosts and Flowers’ comes from a Sonic Youth Album of the same name released in 2000. Music and the echoes of memories it evokes are important. Working to a soundtrack from her past, Boulton’s works become performative, the titles often referencing a personal play list with resulting body of work crafted with the same care and attention as a mix tape for friends.
The ghosts in ‘Ghosts and Flowers’ range from her grandfather who was a prolific still life painter, to the historic cohort of artists Boulton explores. This body of work focuses on Giorgio Morandi with a touch of Mary Moser, Rachel Ruysch and Henri Fantin-Latour in the mix. Boulton starts her process by working directly onto the canvas recalling memories of a specific historical floral painting. Building from the instability of a memory as opposed to directly referencing the work, her desire to respond to the original memory is eventually abandoned as intuition and spontaneity take over and the work writes its own narrative in the layers of paint which are woven together with marks like musical notes, roughed out on the page. The finished paintings retain a feel of the original source in an oblique way, gently nudging association in our memories.
During Boulton’s explosive process, paint is built up and scraped back, the canvas is turned sometimes more than once to destabilise the composition. Different speeds of marks are used, built up impasto, the blur of large gestures, intricate details, and buttery spray paint. As the viewer keeps looking the paintings both unravel and reveal through the speed and rhythm of the marks made over time.
Boulton explores sensation through her use of paint; she wants her work to be initially experienced emotionally rather than through language. Her paintings are both abstractions of and meditations on the history of art, but they are also alive to more urgent, emotional questions surrounding perception and existence itself.
About Miranda Boulton b. 1973, Cambridge, UK
Miranda Boulton is a contemporary British painter who works in London. She studied Art History at Sheffield Hallam University and at Turps Banana Art School in London. Her work has been shown internationally at Art Miami (Miami Basel Week) and Expo Chicago with Cynthia Corbett Gallery, group shows include Royal Academy Summer Exhibition (2016 & 2019), ING Discerning Eye (2019 & 2021), Young Masters Autumn Exhibition & Invitational at the Exhibitionist Hotel (2022-24), and ‘Staged Nature’, Glyndebourne (2023). In 2021 she won the Jacksons Painting Prize. “Ghost and Flowers” marks Boulton’s first London Solo exhibition.
