Statement
Jennifer Nieuwland’s paintings navigate the weirdness and vulnerability of living in a body, seeking to excavate the intangible sensory register that lies deep within our physical and psychic selves. In her work, meaning can be manifested through metaphor, symbolism and the placement of paint itself.
Fundamentally, Nieuwland is interested in the potential of paint to encode and activate sensation - how a nervy scratch can evoke a wounding, a cakey texture can conjure a sense of heaviness or inertia and an agitated brush mark can reflect a twitching energy.
She explores ideas of containment and release through formal and material play. Ambiguous bodily forms stretch, distort, nest, shelter, decompose, erupt, emit or suppress energy; seemingly in the clutches of internal and external forces. Potentially both architects and victims of the world they inhabit, they sit host-less and centre-stage in elemental, heightened spaces.
At first these works may appear outward facing, presenting bold, formally considered and dynamic compositions but on closer inspection they draw the viewer into a more intimate journey. Felt experience is embedded in the skin of the paintings, reverberating through the textures, marks, sheens and colours striking different emotional notes.
Her idiosyncratic painterly language encourages a dialogue about our interiority. It is variously sticky, lumpy, scratched, fleshy, acting in visceral ways while in other instances it is soft, translucent, warm, quiet, conveying moments of introspection, fragility and comfort. These material antinomies echo the tensions, paradoxes and intricacies within her implicitly female experience, while disrupting the logic of her narrative and allowing universal meanings to emerge.
Nieuwland’s playful and intuitive relationship with paint injects an occasionally cartoony aesthetic which offsets the disturbing elements within. Ultimately, her work confronts us with charged and confounding spaces where violence and beauty, humour and pain are negotiated.
EDUCATION
City and Guilds of London Art School, MA Fine Art (Distinction), 2019-2021
London School of Economics, MA Sociology 1998-1999
London School of Economics, BA Geography 1995-1998
SELECTED EXHIBITIONS
2025
Quiet.Bright, Terrace Gallery, London
2024
Salon (II), Liminal Gallery, Margate
Showcase 2, Studio 1.1, London
A room of one’s own, Irving Gallery, Oxford
Inside Out, SET, London
In Bits, Liminal Gallery, Margate (duo show)
2023
About Face, 50MV, Liverpool
Mother Of All, Blue On The Hill Gallery, London
The Waiting Room, The Koppel Project Station, London
Corpus, Hypha Studios Farringdon, London
Turps off-site show, Thames- Side Gallery, London
Stretch, Somers Gallery, London
Art on a Postcard for International Women’s day, Fitzrovia Gallery, London
2022
Now Introducing 2022, Studio West Gallery, London
Matrescence, Liminal Gallery, Margate
Fissured Realms D Contemporary, London
Oh My! What Lovely Basket Of Fruit! New Normal Projects, Netil House, London
I Felt That… The Tub Hackney, London
2021
MA Fine Art Exhibition, City and Guilds of London Art School, London
CGLAS MA Interim Show, London
The Ashurst Collection, London
2019
The Ashurst Collection, London
Affordable Art Fair, Hampstead, London
Finalist, Jacksons Open Painting Prize, London
2018
ING Discerning Eye, Mall Galleries, London
Emerging Women in Art, Burgh House, London
Diverse Portraits: A collective, Burgh House, London
2017
21ST National Open Art Competition, BargeHouse Oxo Tower, London
Emerging Women in Art, Burgh House, London
Sky Arts, Wallace Collection - Finalists exhibition, London
PRIZES and RESIDENCIES
2024 Xenia Creative Retreat - July residency
2023 ACS Studio Prize - Shortlisted
2023 John Moores Painting Prize - Longlisted
2022 Now Introducing 2022, Studio West - Shortlisted
2019 Jacksons open painting prize - Finalist
2018 ING Discerning Eye - Shortlisted
PRESS
2025 Terrace Gallery Publication (CadeCuratorial), A Pastel Palette, Cover and article
2024 SuboArtMagazine, Interview, Winter Issue
2023 Ache Magazine, cover and writings by Rochelle Roberts
2022 HIA Magazine, January Issue - selected artist
2018 Create! Magazine February/March Issue - selected artist