Born: 1968 Capetown, South Africa
Year of Migration to the UK: 1998
Biography
Painter Lisa Brice was born in Cape Town, South Africa in 1968 and grew up during a particularly volatile time in the country’s history. She graduated from the Michaelis School of Fine Art in Cape Town in 1990, and worked as a printmaking assistant to artist Sue Williamson between 1988 and 1991. In 1998 she travelled to London in order to take up a residency at Gasworks Studios and later settled in the capital. The following year she was invited to Port of Spain, Trinidad to participate in a workshop and, subsequently, to undertake a residency alongside local and international artists, including Peter Doig, Chris Ofili, and Emheyo Bahahha. Together they founded CCA7 (Caribbean Contemporary Arts).
Brice’s practice initially encompassed printing, photography, film and other mixed media. After moving to the UK, however, she began to focus exclusively on spontaneous drawing and figure painting. She uses unexpected painting and printing techniques as well as a variety of materials, including canvas and tracing paper. For Brice, the act of tracing often leads to the repetition of motifs or figures in her work, both biographical and art historical. She remarks, ‘I am attracted to the idea of repetition […] stories told and retold’ (Lisa Brice, Goodman Gallery website). Brice’s first exhibition, at the Frank Hanel Gallery in Germany, featured images drawn from Thailand’s sex industry, while subsequent early exhibitions included mixed media work focussing on themes of racial violence and crime in South Africa. In 2014 Brice began a series of painterly female nudes, imagined 'but based on real experience' she recalled in an interview, continuing, 'I painted a group of 60 continuously day and night for a month' which eventually 'grew into a small army of feminine figures' (Lisa Brice quoted in Hannah Valentine, Lady in Blue: The Nudes of Lisa Brice - in Pictures, The Guardian, 19 May 2018). Brice’s work interrogates the male gaze by challenging and reinterpreting traditional depictions of the female nude. She contests the misogynistic nature of historical figure paintings, typically authored by white men for white men. Formal devices such as mirrors, smoke and metal grilles veil her subjects. Examining notions of liminality, Brice's paintings often play with the forms and dimensions of doorways and emphasise the immediacy of our encounter with her muses as we address them face-to-face. The artist is interested in such threshold spaces where transitional states of being come into play; interior and exterior, public and private, artist and model. She reflects that in her recent work, ‘There is no hierarchy between artist and model, as is generally implied in historical studio scenes of male painters and their female models; they are all on their own time, whether active or paused, in contemplation or in conversation with one another. Nude and clothed figures are interchangeable, and the active and the passive are similarly equal in status within the scene. They are all artists at work in one way or another’ (Lisa Brice, Charleston website). Brice’s use of vermillion and cobalt blue obscures and obfuscates, discouraging an easy ‘read' of the female form. Cobalt blue was chosen because of its specific associations: ‘from the glow of blue neon signs to the fleeting colour of twilight, to the Trinidadian ‘blue devil’ carnival character’ (Lisa Brice). Taking ownership over the portrayal of women, her paintings echo iconic compositions by artists such as Degas, Manet and Picasso, but instead feature muses with agency, while her interiors draw on visual impressions gathered from life and work in South Africa, London and Trinidad over the past 20 years.
Brice’s work has been represented in major solo and group exhibitions throughout the UK. In 2016 her work was shown in the group exhibition, La Diablesse at Tramps and Making & Unmaking at the Camden Arts Centre, both in London. The following year solo exhibitions of her work took place at the Stephen Friedman Gallery and at Tate Britain as part of the Art Now series. In 2019 Stephen Friedman hosted the artist’s second solo exhibition and her work was featured in Artists I Steal From, at Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac (2019). In 2021 she was the subject of a solo presentation of new works at Charleston Trust, Lewes, also featuring in Mixing it Up: Painting Today at the Hayward Gallery and in Between the Islands: Caribbean-British Art 1950s-Now at Tate Britain. In 2022 her work will feature in A Century of the Artist’s Studio 1920–2020, at the Whitechapel Gallery, London. Lisa Brice lives and works in London, England. She is represented by Stephen Friedman Gallery in London and her work is featured in UK public collections including the South African High Commission, London and the Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester.
Related books
- Matt Price, The Anomie Review of Contemporary British Painting 2 (Anomie Publishing, 2021)
- David A. Bailey and Alex Farquharson, Life Between Islands: Caribbean-British Art 1950s-Now (London, Tate Publishing, 2021)
- 25 Years (London: Stephen Friedman Gallery, 2020)
- Making & Unmaking (London: Camden Art Centre, 2016)
- Vitamin P2: Anthology of International Painting, Phaidon (2011)
- Sue Williamson ed., South African Art Now (Harper Collins, 2009)
- S. Perryer ed., 10 Years 100 Artists: Art in a Democratic South Africa (Bell-Roberts Publishing in association with Struik Publishers, Cape Town, 2004)
- D. Brodie ed., New Strategies (Johannesburg: Johannesburg Art Gallery, 2002)
Public collections
Related organisations
- Caribbean Contemporary Arts (co-founder)
- Gasworks (artist in residence)
Related web links
- Lisa Brice, Stephen Friedman Gallery
- Lisa Brice, Charleston
- Lisa Brice, Salon 94
- Hannah Valentine, Lady in blue: the nudes of Lisa Brice – in pictures, The Guardian, 19 May 2018
Selected exhibitions
- A Century of the Artist’s Studio 1920–2020, Whitechapel Gallery, London, England (2022)
- Mixing It Up: Painting Today, Hayward Gallery (2021)
- Life Between Islands: Caribbean-British Art 1950s-Now, Tate Britain (2021)
- Lisa Brice, Charleston Trust (2021)
- A Contemporary Collection, Hepworth Wakefield (2020)
- 25 Years, Stephen Friedman Gallery (2020)
- Monster/Beauty: An Exploration of the Female/Femme Gaze, Lychee One (2020)
- This Corrosion, Modern Art (2020)
- Lisa Brice, Stephen Friedman Gallery (2019)
- Artists I Steal From, Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac (2019)
- Art Now: Lisa Brice, Tate Britain (2018)
- Lisa Brice, Stephen Friedman Gallery (2017)
- La Diablesse, Tramps (2017)
- Making and Unmaking, Camden Arts Centre (2016)
- Making & Unmaking, Camden Art Centre (2016)
- Puppet Show, Grundy Art Gallery (2016)
- Cut Your Coat, French Riviera (2014)
- What we did the following year, Ritter Zamet Galerie (2013)
- X, Stephen Lawrence Gallery, University of Greenwich (2004)
- Bootleg, Spitalfields Market (2003)
- Supermarketed, Victoria & Albert Museum (2001)
- Groundswell, Mermaid Theatre Gallery (1996)
