b.1981, Stroud, UK. Lives and works in London. BA Painting Studied at Glasgow School of Art, Glasgow. And MA Painting, at Royal College of Art. Winner of the Civitella Ranieri Foundation Residency, Umbria, Italy, 2014.

Celia Hempton paints small scale expressionistic canvases which embrace every subject, be it a landscape or human model, with a pragmatic but energetic desire to capture a monumentalised moment in time. In her most recent series, Chat Random, Hempton visited internet chat rooms and asked the people she meet (coincidently all men) if they would model for her. The resulting paintings are performative time specific works, painted only in the duration that the model chose to stay on screen. They feature men in varying degrees of undress from a wide variety of locations around the world, revealing the sadness and vulnerability within often blatant expressions of sexual desire.

 

Selected solo exhibitions: Chat Random, Southard Reid, London (year); Galleria Lorcan O’Neill, Rome (2014); VUG, Neuer Aachener Kunstverein, Aachen (year);Cur, Southard Reid, London (2013); TIN, Take Courage, London (2012); Celia Hempton, Southard Reid, London (2011) and Raze/Built, Wolstenholme Creative Space, Liverpool (2010).