Henrietta Simson

At the heart of Henrietta Simson’s research lies an exploration into the development of spatial construction within the Western visual tradition. The advance of photography in the 19th century saw the culmination of an ideological evolution in the West, a process that started with the discovery of Renaissance perspective and whose aim was complete verisimilitude in visual representation. This ideology of perspective, camera and film, whose ‘reality’ is a fully objective equivalent of natural vision, ensures the status of the observer and their relationship with the observed is rigidly defined and controlled. Simson approaches her subject in two different, but complimentary ways. Firstly, she investigates pictorial methodologies from the early Renaissance and their experimental use of perspective. Secondly, she manipulates contemporary photographic landscape images, a process that challenges photography’s normative equivalency of ‘natural vision’.

In tre and quattrocento painting, it is possible to see a shift in paradigm from a medieval metaphysical world to the beginnings of Renaissance scientific thought. This crossover, from one mindset to another, exists on the picture surface, within the construction of the image itself. By removing all narrative elements from the original image and painting only the landscape space that is left, Simson makes paintings that explore the possibility of an alternative visualisation of space. In the second aspect of her practice, photographic images are projected onto a support and their perceived materiality is altered through various techniques which include drawing directly on top of the image, cutting into the screen etc. This creates dual and contradictory effects, and allows an elegant enquiry into the nature of visual representation. A question is raised around the notion of presence and non-presence, reality and image.

These paintings and projected images examine the boundaries created by perspective and photography’s assumption of a ‘true’ visual equivalency and present an alternative visualisation of the construction and representation of landscape space.

Simson’s work plays with the relationship between the original and the copy. Landscape elements are copied from early Renaissance paintings and images are photocopied from tourist brochures and travel supplements. She draws directly on top of projected images and also makes further copies of her paintings. The materials used to construct her paintings are gesso on board, gold leaf and pigment, thus ensuring that the ‘copy’ maintains a direct material relationship with the ‘original’ early Renaissance image. These processes highlight ambiguities between the relationship of the copy to the original and through their different means explore ideas associated with inauthentic and authentic experience, and the contextual de-territorialisation and re-territorialisation of the image. Copies become originals and in doing so create new visual and spatial possibilities.

Born in 1971, lives and works in London.

Education
2005 – 2007: MA Fine Art, Slade School of Fine Art, London
1990 -1993: BA Fine Art, Bristol School of Art, University of the West of England
1992: Erasmus Exchange Programme, Facultad des Belles Artes, Universidad de Barcelona

Solo Exhibitions
2008: Solo exhibition, Man&Eve, London
2007: Slade Summer School of Fine Art, London — Solo exhibition of recent works, Foreign Press Association, London

Selected Group Exhibitions
2007: ‘Aqua Wynwood art fair’, Miami, USA — ‘Year_o7 Art Projects’, London — ‘MA/MFA Degree Show’, Slade School of Fine Art, London
2006: ‘The New Contemporaries 2006’, Liverpool Biennial, Liverpool and London — ‘Scape’, Slade Research Centre, Woburn Square, London — ‘The Sefton Open’, Netherton Arts Centre, Merseyside
2005: ‘The Jerwood Drawing Prize’ (UK touring exhibition) — ‘Recent Work’, Lauderdale House, Highgate, London — ‘Recent Work’, Jenny Granger Gallery, Whitstable — ‘Home Life’, Stroud House Gallery, Gloucestershire
2004: ‘Featured Artist’, The Blue Wing Gallery, Padstow, Cornwall
2003: ‘Christmas 1’, The Jelly Gallery, Reading — ‘Drawing Show’, Jelly Leg’d Gallery, Reading
2002: ‘A6 Show’, The Lewisham Arthouse, London — ‘Young Artists’, Xanza, Hertfordshire

Awards
2007: Clare Winsten Memorial Award — Gordon Luton Award for Fine Art
2006: Slade Alumni Scholarship
1999: Dearle and Henderson Art Prize

Residencies
2002-2003: Artist in Residence, The Art Factory, Luton, Bedfordshire

Select Publications
2007: Celeste Art Prize exhibition catalogue
2006: Bloomberg New Contemporaries exhibition catalogue — Agenda, Wallpaper Magazine, November — Art Monthly, November — Art Review, September —
Grayson Perry, The Times 2, 15 November
2005: The Jerwood Drawing Prize exhibition catalogue