Vanity Case

At:
Lost in Beauty
117 Regents Park Road, Primrose Hill, London NW1

23 April–1 June 2008


Cathy Lomax’s Vanity Case features a cornucopia of new paintings inspired by the pages of fashion magazines. Each image is a subjective selection that replays and subverts notions of an art historical gaze.

The girls, isolated and cut from their original commercial intentions, are free to take on another existence - the mise en scene, made-up world of paintings. This reconfiguration is further enhanced by Lomax’s romantically girly titles such as Hellcat, Bolero or Broderie Anglaise. The titles provide a sub-text that reveals the contemporary imperative of painting’s ability to make up its own stories.

These girls move in and out of time, from the pages of Vogue to the pages of romantic fiction but their function is always underpinned by the artist’s commitment to painting. The drips and swirls are there to remind us that the picture we are looking at is not a substitute for a photograph but a hand-made object where the artist is not just art director but total creator.

Vanity Case is the first exhibition at London's newest beauty emporium - Lost in Beauty