Becky Brewis
- Work
- Biography
I make work about relationships with the past, using mainly drawing and textiles to explore the spaces between body, memory and making. In a digital age in which pictures are continually taken from their original contexts and repurposed, my work presents images as material objects under pressure.
My drawing is underpinned by an interest in paper as a kind of skin; a repository for different sorts of images: drawn ones, erased ones, frottages and fingerprints, so that signs of making and handling – memories of physical human presence – are incorporated into the finished piece.
My textile work develops this approach to image-making with reference to the female body. Alongside materials used in feminine traditions of making, such as wool, thread and jute, I am developing a language of pictograms, hairballs, false eyelashes, hair grips and fragments of painted canvas; tactile, abject, provisional parts which undermine the authority of the image.
My imagery mixes the autobiographical with the ancient and my practice is informed by discussion from the field of material culture. Ruination, fragmentation and the integrity (or otherwise) of object collections are my reference points for exploring my relationship with my personal past within a wider cultural and material context.
My drawing is underpinned by an interest in paper as a kind of skin; a repository for different sorts of images: drawn ones, erased ones, frottages and fingerprints, so that signs of making and handling – memories of physical human presence – are incorporated into the finished piece.
My textile work develops this approach to image-making with reference to the female body. Alongside materials used in feminine traditions of making, such as wool, thread and jute, I am developing a language of pictograms, hairballs, false eyelashes, hair grips and fragments of painted canvas; tactile, abject, provisional parts which undermine the authority of the image.
My imagery mixes the autobiographical with the ancient and my practice is informed by discussion from the field of material culture. Ruination, fragmentation and the integrity (or otherwise) of object collections are my reference points for exploring my relationship with my personal past within a wider cultural and material context.
beckybrewis.com | b. 1989, London | info@beckybrewis.co.uk
SELECTED EXHIBITIONS
2020 RSA Annual Exhibition, Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh
2020 Salon des Refusés, Embassy Gallery, Edinburgh
2020 Ceremonial, Tent Gallery, Edinburgh
2019 Firm is my hand but sweet my mind, solo show, Cultureland, Amsterdam
2019 Migration, Meaning, Time, Centre for Philosophy and Visual Art, Bush House, London
2019 Pennywell Artists, Pennywell Project, Bristol
2018 Desert Island, S-G Gallery, London
2018 Visions in the Nunnery 2018, selected by Tina Keane, The Nunnery Gallery, London
2018 SPACE / LCN Showcase - 5th Edition, SPACE, Hackney
2018 INDEX, Stoke Newington Library Gallery, London
2018 Artist Film Festival VI, The Bomb Factory, London + Art Space, Exeter
2018 Thames-Side Open Studios, London
2017 Jerwood Drawing Prize 2017, Jerwood Space, London
2017 In Dreams, Menier Gallery, London
2017 Artsdepot Open 2017, Apthorp Gallery, London
2017 Hidden Lines of Space, Kunstverein am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz, Berlin
2017 London Festival of Architecture, Soho Square, London
2016 Best of the Drawing Year, Christie’s, London
2016 The Drawing Year Exhibition, Royal Drawing School, London
RESIDENCIES
2019 Cultureland, Amsterdam
2018 London Creative Network, Space Studios Hackney
2018 Dumfries House, Scotland
2018 Centre for Philosophy and the Visual Arts, King's College London
2018 Örö, Finland
2018 AARK, Finland
2017 Dumfries House, Scotland
2017 Cill Railaig Project, Ireland
EDUCATION
2019-2021 Edinburgh College of Art, Contemporary Art Practice MFA
2015-2016 Royal Drawing School, The Drawing Year, postgraduate / bursary
2007-2010 University of Oxford, English BA Hons
TEXTS
2017 Lines Across London, British Land, London. Exhibition text.
2015 Re-thinking the Urban Landscape, The Building Centre, London. Exhibition text.
2016 Landscape. Visual essay for the journal of the Landscape Institute.
2015 Public London, New London Architecture. Exhibition essay.
COLLECTIONS
Dumfries House Collection, Windsor Castle Royal Collection
SELECTED EXHIBITIONS
2020 RSA Annual Exhibition, Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh
2020 Salon des Refusés, Embassy Gallery, Edinburgh
2020 Ceremonial, Tent Gallery, Edinburgh
2019 Firm is my hand but sweet my mind, solo show, Cultureland, Amsterdam
2019 Migration, Meaning, Time, Centre for Philosophy and Visual Art, Bush House, London
2019 Pennywell Artists, Pennywell Project, Bristol
2018 Desert Island, S-G Gallery, London
2018 Visions in the Nunnery 2018, selected by Tina Keane, The Nunnery Gallery, London
2018 SPACE / LCN Showcase - 5th Edition, SPACE, Hackney
2018 INDEX, Stoke Newington Library Gallery, London
2018 Artist Film Festival VI, The Bomb Factory, London + Art Space, Exeter
2018 Thames-Side Open Studios, London
2017 Jerwood Drawing Prize 2017, Jerwood Space, London
2017 In Dreams, Menier Gallery, London
2017 Artsdepot Open 2017, Apthorp Gallery, London
2017 Hidden Lines of Space, Kunstverein am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz, Berlin
2017 London Festival of Architecture, Soho Square, London
2016 Best of the Drawing Year, Christie’s, London
2016 The Drawing Year Exhibition, Royal Drawing School, London
RESIDENCIES
2019 Cultureland, Amsterdam
2018 London Creative Network, Space Studios Hackney
2018 Dumfries House, Scotland
2018 Centre for Philosophy and the Visual Arts, King's College London
2018 Örö, Finland
2018 AARK, Finland
2017 Dumfries House, Scotland
2017 Cill Railaig Project, Ireland
EDUCATION
2019-2021 Edinburgh College of Art, Contemporary Art Practice MFA
2015-2016 Royal Drawing School, The Drawing Year, postgraduate / bursary
2007-2010 University of Oxford, English BA Hons
TEXTS
2017 Lines Across London, British Land, London. Exhibition text.
2015 Re-thinking the Urban Landscape, The Building Centre, London. Exhibition text.
2016 Landscape. Visual essay for the journal of the Landscape Institute.
2015 Public London, New London Architecture. Exhibition essay.
COLLECTIONS
Dumfries House Collection, Windsor Castle Royal Collection
- Becky Brewis
- Daughters of the Rijksmuseum, 2019
- Installation
- Becky Brewis
- Anatomical votive wombs based on images in the Wellcome Collection (each c.15cm long), 2020
- Ceramics
- Becky Brewis
- Buried at Night (50x38cm) wallpaper sample with wool, wood, felt and linen, 2019
- Stitched
- Becky Brewis
- Wallpaper (250cm x 45cm), 2020
- Drawing
- Becky Brewis
- Surgery Waiting Room in about 1995 (160 x 150cm), 2020
- Stitched
- Becky Brewis
- Veils (130cm x 98cm), 2020
- Stitched
- Becky Brewis
- Three eyelashes, graphite on paper, 25 x 21 cm, 2021
- Drawing
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