London, Art First Projects, Dolly Thompsett: The Secret of Life and Other Stories, 10 June – 14 August 2015;
Woking, The Lightbox, Not all contemporary art is rubbish! 2 February – 10 April 2016;
Woking, The Lightbox, Redressing the Balance: Women Artists from The Ingram Collection, 11 August – 20 September 2020
Paul Carey-Kent writes of the present work, Expedition Interior, that in it Thompsett broadens yet further the physical and conceptual layering which has characterised her work over the past decade. Physically, she continues to create spatial ambiguity by painting on and under resin, by applying glitter, exploiting dramatic light effects, and varying the clarity, scale and detail of what we see. The works in this series are painted onto flower-patterned fabrics providing a baroque framework, elements of which occasionally show through as unexpected forms. These new paintings develop spontaneously to run from Rococo painting and Gothic ruins to videogames.
The paintings also take on a psychological dimension “I’m interested”, she says, “in how three things came together: the psychological state of the artist, the accidental mark, and some kind of emerging familiar image being pinned down.”
