2025 - 13
In 2019 I visited an exhibition @Autograph - The Space Between Things - which changed the way I saw art. Phoebe Boswell had taken over the gallery and had drawn herself into the space using willow charcoal. From a photograph taken of herself once a day, over a month, she drew versions of herself that became a process piece creating a graphic, traumatic tale marked in black. Acknowledging in the exhibition through different media her damaged eye and possible lost sight, her heart medically broken and how sanity is gained through video and drawing with a sense of understanding.
The exhibition with film and drawing showed a point in Phoebe’s life where everything was upside down, in this show she somehow rights it. She found a creative rhythm to express healing and catharsis.
‘I am here, I am present, I exist, I won’t be silent’ - and acceptance – ‘I'm fragile, I'm vulnerable, our bodies are fallible and unexpected’. Boswell’s words inspired me, and five years later her work still does.
I am so please to have had such a stimulating conversation with Phoebe for CREATIVE BOOST. Her work has been shown internationally including in the Gagosian, Cristea Roberts Gallery, Dulwich Picture Gallery and Kettles Yard, Prospect New Orleans and Lyon Bienale and held in collections widely, including The British Museum, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, RISD, the British Film Institute’s National Archive and the UK Government Art Collection. Her writing at institutions including Tate Britain, Victoria & Albert Museum, She recently joined @benhunter.gallery.