MADE Gallery is pleased to present the first solo exhibition by the 2017 MADE Summer Art Prize winner Zena Blackwell. The show will act as a significant platform for her striking new works painted in acrylic and oils and produced over the past 8 months.

The source for Blackwell’s imagery are the threads of family life; observations of her children in varying domestic scenarios at rest or at play. With a stylised intensity of vibrant colour and pattern, the paintings elevate the everyday beyond the ordinary. The Mother / artist’s viewpoint is there as a subversive sub-text throughout the work, revealing an intensity and shift in the ‘normal’ scale of things; to claustrophobic effect. Underneath the witnessed moment of an apparently innocent snapshot of childhood, there is the constant undertone of adult anxiety, and a sense of building drama.