Bio

(b. 1988, UK) lives and works in Margate, UK.
In Footes’ dream-like paintings, a cast of ghost-like forms are rendered through an elastic timeframe, occupying almost hallucinatory space yet tethered to a familiar reality.

The imagery is pulled from Footes’ personal experience and fragments of memory, filtered through an agglomeration of art historical references, the aesthetics of cinematography, French poetry and world literature – elements that the artist became acquainted with during long periods of convalescence. Living with an aggressive autoimmune disease since childhood has prompted her to explore ideas of dysfunction (disease) and healing, and how they manifest in the psychological, architectural and bodily realms.

Footes describes her process as pulling apart the facades of architecture and the flesh, looking to capture things the eye can’t see and that are also beyond the limitations of technology. Influenced by the innumerable NHS x-rays and scanners used on her own body, she likes to ‘zoom out’ and create psychogeographic mind maps of remembered spaces and neighbourhoods, and then zoom in – seeing through walls, exploring interiors and peering through the spectre of the permeable, transient body into the cosmos of its cells.

With everything laid bare for her audience – the uncomfortable moments, the daily rituals, and even our internal systems, both anatomical and psychological, Footes hopes to share the beauty of dysfunction.

Footes will be participating in the forthcoming gallery group show Realms, curated by Gemma Rolls-Bentley, opening Sunday 29th September. In November she will have her first solo show at the gallery.

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