Aftersun
Balazsi Gallery•Jun 04, 2026 — Sep 04, 2026
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Lydia Blakeley: A Conchology
There is something very vintage about a sunburst. To write about the art of Lydia Blakeley, I have to become the art historian Elisabeth Demand, the protagonist in Ali Smith’s novel Autumn (2016). It has been ten years since Blakeley graduated from the art school we both used to practice in, and I want to realise what the fictional Demand is working on now. As Derek Horton was quick to note, the pop art of Pauline Boty (1938-66) is a vibrant touchstone for Blakeley.[1] Boty’s collage-paintings or ‘pictures of pictures’ present Blakeley with a wealth of pictorial strategies: from abstract partitions to wistful expressions; from cult personas to the glamour and gossip of the minibreak.[2]
Aftersun has a residual quality, offering an enticing coda to previous bodies of work as well as a departure point. I maintain that painting for Blakeley is both an intrinsically nostalgic and de-romanticized activity, a technically accomplished and well-observed practice…
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Aftersun
Balazsi Gallery•Jun 04, 2026 — Sep 04, 2026
Press Release
Lydia Blakeley: A Conchology
There is something very vintage about a sunburst. To write about the art of Lydia Blakeley, I have to become the art historian Elisabeth Demand, the protagonist in Ali Smith’s novel Autumn (2016). It has been ten years since Blakeley graduated from the art school we both used to practice in, and I want to realise what the fictional Demand is working on now. As Derek Horton was quick to note, the pop art of Pauline Boty (1938-66) is a vibrant touchstone for Blakeley.[1] Boty’s collage-paintings or ‘pictures of pictures’ present Blakeley with a wealth of pictorial strategies: from abstract partitions to wistful expressions; from cult personas to the glamour and gossip of the minibreak.[2]
Aftersun has a residual quality, offering an enticing coda to previous bodies of work as well as a departure point. I maintain that painting for Blakeley is both an intrinsically nostalgic and de-romanticized activity, a technically accomplished and well-observed practice…
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