Lily Kemp

Lily Kemp (b. 1997) is an artist based in London. With an underlying interest in exploring narratives touching on the fluidity of gender and identities, Kemp’s paintings explore escapism, storytelling, the act of dressing up and playing out imagined roles.

Drawing from a range of visual references and written sources, through the process of collage she interweaves figures and images from popular culture alongside found images of landscapes and her own personal photographs. Looking in part at the relationships between popular culture, gender norms and our sense of self. More specifically at our relationship with fashion, how the way we choose to present ourselves can be considered an extension of ourselves and a way of exploring our identities outside of socially constructed binary categorisations. 

The sense of scale in Kemp’s paintings is often distorted and exaggerated with an interchangeable indistinct relationship between her figures and the space surrounding them, her landscapes seeming to breathe a life of their own. Scenes are often hyper idealised and fantastical; her figures living within these imagined worlds and dream-like realities which are both familiar, yet also border on the performative and theatrical.

Kemp holds a BA in Fine Art Painting from the University of the Arts London (2019)

Solo and duo exhibitions include ‘Inner Voyage Out’ (with Minyoung Kim), Over the Influence, Hong Kong (2024); ‘Taking flight’, Taymour Grahne Projects, London (2023); ‘Cry me a river’, Galeria Duarte Sequeira, Seoul (2022). 

Her work has been featured in group exhibitions and art fairs including ‘New Now’, Guts Gallery, London (2024); Over the Influence at Kiaf Seoul, Seoul (2023); Galeria Duarte Sequeira at Art Busan, Seoul (2022); ‘Intimacy’, Taymour Grahne Projects, London (2022); ‘What Now?’, PM/AM gallery, London (2022); ‘Assemble’, V.O Curations, London (2022); Galeria Duarte Sequeira at ARCO Madrid (2021); ‘Bloomberg New Contemporaries’, South London Gallery, London (2021). 

Kemp has completed the She Curates x CloverMill Artist Residency, The Netherlands (2021). She has been awarded the Lim Ai Fang Art Prize at the Woon Foundation Painting & Sculpture Prize (2019) and shortlisted for the The Clyde & Co Art Award (2019) and Signature Art Prize (2020). 

Her work is held in the collections of the University of Arts London and the UK Government Art Collection.