Harriet Gillett

Responding to an increasingly digitalised world where images and time periods merge and appear in one seemingly eternal present, Harriet Gillett hopes to slow down these increasingly fast-paced encounters into images of reverie. Taking reference from the emotionally charged vibrancy of post-Impressionism and the devotional nature of Western religious formats, her combination of traditional subjects with contemporary materials enables her to tread a line between multiple perspectives and time periods.

She works from sketches made in the moment, usually of friends in pubs and at live gigs, later attempting to capture these communities and atmospheres within her paintings. Working predominantly with oil and spray paint, she layers thin veils of colour over a warm fluorescent spray paint ground that is reminiscent of the gold within icon paintings and a “rose-tinted” lens. This enables the work to position itself between the past and present, the traditional and the contemporary, both in terms of its imagery and its materiality.