Ben Uri Research Unit

Born: 1981 Rooi Els, South Africa

Year of Migration to the UK: 2009

Biography

Painter, printmaker, and photographer, Tamsin Relly was born in Rooi-Els, near Cape Town, South Africa, on 27 May 1981. Growing up and being educated ‘100 metres from the ocean’ in Somerset West, Western Cape, its ‘cold seas, rocky mountains, and shorelines for playgrounds’ had a lasting impact on her art practice later in life (Geach, 2016). She attended Parel Vallei High School in 1998, where art teacher Francois Visser helped foster her interest in painting and to recognise ‘a magic in the creative process’ (MacFarlane, 2016). However, one of her earliest memories of artistic inspiration came from watching her older sister create watercolour paintings (Winsor & Newton, July 2021). In 2009, Relly moved to London to be closer to family members who had already emigrated from South Africa, and she completed an MA at City & Guilds of London Art School in 2011.

Relly initially found it almost impossible to establish her artistic practice in London, but she gradually built a local network by participating in various art studios and establishing a small open-access print studio (Holm, 2016). She began exhibiting widely, including in Space for Change at Parlour Gallery Project Space in 2011, and at the Royal Academy of Art’s Summer Exhibition in 2012. While her early work was autobiographical and localised, her focus gradually shifted towards ecological crises, ‘exploring ideas around how we find connection with our living world, and how we can move towards living in reciprocity with nature, remembering that we are a part of it,’ (Winsor & Newton, July 2021). This transition was exemplified by her first UK solo show, Tipping Point, at London’s ASC Window Gallery in late 2012, which explored the effects of contemporary Western lifestyles on the balance of the Earth’s ecosystem. In a 2016 interview with Kensington and Chelsea Review, Relly linked her artistic interests to her decision to remain in London, saying the city, ‘with its wonderful combination of glamour and grit,’ offers ‘infinite inspiration in terms of artmaking and curation.’ She added that the city ‘feels engaged in global geo-politics in a way that I think is important for my work right now' (Coveney, 2016). A year later, she participated in Green Creates, a fundraising auction for the Green Party of England and Wales at Hoxton Arches, London. That same year, she held a solo exhibition, Forest Memory, at Brocket Gallery, London, which subtly explored themes of artificiality and ecological transformation.

As part of her creative process, Relly has also undertaken research trips, including camping at the Eden Project in Cornwall for nearly a week and, in 2014, she participated in The Arctic Circle, an expeditionary residency on board a tall ship in Svalbard, Norway, enabling her to experience the rapidly changing Polar regions first hand. Following the expedition, she had a short residency as part of RETHINK: Environment at the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, working in a studio next to the RETHINK Gallery, during which she reflected on her trip and researched NMM archives, studying some of the earliest photographs of the Polar regions, culminating in her project entitled Remembering the North. Relly also served as a panellist at the NMM's Art and Climate Change conference (2015).

In addition to her ecological work, Relly has significantly contributed to Hospital Rooms, an arts and mental health charity that commissions permanent work for secure NHS mental health units in the UK. In 2018, she created large-scale works for Eileen Skellern 1, a ward for women with severe, ongoing mental illnesses, at the Maudsley Hospital, London. While her work reflects ‘the devastating impact we’re having on our environment,’ Relly said it was equally important at Eileen Skellern 1 to emphasise ‘a celebration of nature in all its wonder, and a call to find that place of love for our planet’ (Evans, 2018). Having witnessed her mother’s hospitalisations for bipolar disorder, Relly explained that the charity promotes growth and helps ‘offer warmth and upliftment, but I think also helps people feel recognised, respected, and intellectually engaged,’ (Cass Art, 2021). She has led numerous workshops for Hospital Rooms since 2017.

For many years, Relly has used watercolours to create monotypes, a process that involves painting onto a clear acetate-like plate and, after allowing it to dry, transferring the image onto damp paper using a press. Following the birth of her daughter in 2019, she experimented with ‘ways of making work within the parameters of being a parent’ by creating smaller-scale, less time-consuming pieces (Oliver, 2021). She began applying watercolours directly to handmade cotton paper, preferring its tougher texture over regular paper. Some of these watercolour paintings and monotypes were featured in her 2021 solo online exhibition, For the Sun Gods, with Zuleika Gallery, Oxford. Tamsin Relly lives and works in London. In the UK public domain, her work is held in the collection of the NMM.

Related books

Niamh White, 'Hospital Rooms', Journal of Visual Communication in Medicine, Vol. 41, Iss. 4, 2018, pp. 206-211
Niamh White et al., Control to Collapse, exh. cat. (London: Blyth Gallery, 2017)
Tamsin Relly, 'The Centre Cannot Hold', The Jackdaw, November/December 2012, p. 31
Genna Gardini, 'Exploring Relationships: Wessels and Relly's Works Seem to Want to Scratch Beneath the Surface, Searching to Expose Things', The New Age, 1 February 2012, p. 26
'Life Drawing', Garden & Home, October 2007, pp. 34-35
Malaika Byng, 'Raw Talent', The Sunday Independent, 29 July 2007

Public collections

National Maritime Museum, Royal Museums Greenwich

Related organisations

City and Guilds Art School (student )

Selected exhibitions

Into the Light of the Present Day, Oliver Projects, London (2021)
Polar Worlds, National Maritime Museum, London (2018-19)
Hospital Rooms & Eileen Skellern 1, Griffin Gallery, London (2018)
Forest Memory, Brocket Gallery, London (2017)
Imagining the Amazon, The Collective, The House of St Barnabas, London (2017)
Control to Collapse, Blyth Gallery, London (2017)
A Sense of Place, Simmons Contemporary, London (2017)
Green Creates, Fundraising Auction for the Green Party of England and Wales, Hoxton Arches, London (2017)
Royal Academy of Arts in Yorkhire, Zillah Bell Gallery, North Yorkshire (2014)
Landscape to a Blindman's Eye, Slate Projects, London (2014)
Tipping Point, ASC Window Space, London (2012)
Summer Exhibition, Royal Academy of Arts, London (2012)
Space for Change, Parlour Gallery Project Space, London (2011)

Ben Uri archive

Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Tamsin Relly]

Ben Uri Research Unit

for the study and digital recording of the Jewish, Refugee and wide Immigrant contribution to British visual culture since 1900.

Tamsin Relly artist