Mia Wilkinson

View works. Mia Wilkinson
View works
Mia Wilkinson is a London based artist, whose oil paintings are visceral explorations of certain sexualized female forms. The sensual indulgence with which she approaches the paint is reflective of her subject; female body builders and squashers wrestle on the canvas in an orgy of drips and loaded excess paint. The humorous and light hearted intention with which she approaches her work is not lost, as complex issues of sex and gender are confronted by her brush.

Mia Wilkinson is a London based artist, whose oil paintings are visceral explorations of certain sexualized female forms. The sensual indulgence with which she approaches the paint is reflective of her subject; female body builders and squashers wrestle on the canvas in an orgy of drips and loaded excess paint. The humorous and light hearted intention with which she approaches her work is not lost, as complex issues of sex and gender are confronted by her brush.

‘Accidental properties created by applying wet on wet, prove just as important to my work; dripping from the nipples and nails and mouth and feet, that go in and out of the women enable a feeling of sensuality sprinkled with disgust’

Handling the paint in a fast paced vigour, Wilkinson’s paintings have found their own loopy language in which it describes the figures with intense immediacy, whilst still embracing the particularities of the female flesh. Exuding a confidence within the paint she plays with the sculptural solidity of their bodies against flat backgrounds, referencing the images of which she originally collated to use as a source material. The work is unapologetic, and intense, yet doesn’t become the expected angst ridden expressionism, rather comedic as the figures are increasingly morphing out of themselves and are hilariously exposed as bizarre avatars. Confined within unsettling narratives and displaying an obvious absurd aggression and transgression, provides a powerful yet witty statement about the way identity is performed within a media culture.

 

Artist statement:

Through my work I create compositions of the ‘female’ body forming narratives from original collages, drawings and paint. My paintings explore proximity and entanglement embodying current emotional (and subconsciously personal) values about the female body and status in a current media culture. Despite their commodification and abjection these performers powerfully return the objectifying gaze of the viewer, with humour and powerful resilience. 
 
Purposely provocative, blurring the boundary between actual and virtual appearance.  My depictions of the female form are an exploration of this malleable line, using the joyous, exaggerated and sometimes grotesque portrayals of the female body as a method of challenging male objectification and reconfiguring the male gaze. Sometimes resembling excrement, sometimes ice cream, the deliciously repulsive bodies of the women in my paintings are sculpted by their environment and the animals or cherubic figures that surround them. 
 
The figures I paint morph into bizarre avatars, uncertain of their identity and driven by ludicrous compulsions. Humour is a vital essence in the work; the paintings are brimming with ribald narratives, creating claustrophobic scenarios, which topple onto the space of the viewer, creating a pantomime of entangled bodies, in surreal, burlesque oppositions. There is an ambiguity of dominance and submission, jostling the norms of classical painting, from Rubens to Delacroix, to attempt to find where a contemporary female painter can belong. The work aims to seduce, as well as unmasking social absurdities and satirise gender stereotypes. 

 

Education:

Wimbledon College of Art UAL

 

Exhibitions:

Upcoming: November 2023 'Sweet Potion' group show, Artistellar Gallery, London

August-September 2023: group show, The Nomas Salon, London

May 2023 - 'Domesticated Hinny', Gertrude Art x Koko Camden, London

2022 - The House of st Barnabas, London 

2022 - The Art Bypass Gallery

2018- 'This is not porn' solo show, Public Gallery, London

2017- Clerkenwell Green, Retrespect, London

2017- The Benabai Expo, Art Alika, OXO Wharf Tower, London

2017 - T'ART, Bones and Pear Gallery, London