Georgina Clapham, (b.1993), United Kingdom, is a painter and printmaker currently based in Los Angeles. Having graduated with a BA (Hons) at The Glasgow School of Art, Scotland, in 2016, she is currently an MFA candidate at Otis College of Art and Design, (CA), expecting to graduate in 2025.
Influenced by archetypal figures in history, from fantasy, folklore or legends to celebrity and the lifestyles that have been mythologised by popular culture. Clapham combines the traditional media of oil paint on linen with screen-printmaking, creating her own contemporary mythologies that explore how we experience icons throughout time via different forms of media, from film and TV, books, billboards and the internet. Interested in unpacking the production of desire through advertising and the evolutionary status of fashion items through history, she looks at the way in which certain symbols are kept alive in mass culture through endless reconfigurations and popular narratives. Her paintings aim to reflect the chaos and seduction of contemporary content consumption through social media or virtual aspirational mood boards like Pinterest, with an awareness of the glitch and artifice of identity construction in our current climate.
Through collage, drawing, painting and printmaking, her works reflect the commodification of our personal content, translating this into the physical mark by showing the breadth, or limitations, of the human hand. Using text, repetition or colour saturation to mimic the quality of an image as it degrades through multiple manipulations or reappropriations.