Would be great if you could make it to Josephine King’s private view for LIFE SO FAR at Riflemaker on Monday 13 September from 6 to 9pm.

Paula Rego, whom Josephine King has modelled for, said of her work:
"This is a grim and terrible subject, and the fact that she has shown it as playful and child-like images make it more frightening. They seem to me to be totally truthful pictures, from the heart, and they frighten me. Many people will identify with these images"
(Paula Rego, June 2010)

Drop me a line, if you are able to make it.
Best wishes, Jeanette

Riflemaker
Press release
JOSEPHINE KING: LIFE SO FAR
13 September to 30 October 2010

Josephine King (b.1965, London) shows self-portraits that describe the trauma caused by the artist’s own extreme bi-polar disorder, in ‘Life So Far’, her debut solo exhibition at Riflemaker from 13 September.

Riflemaker presents 80 coloured ink paintings made by King over the last five years. These full-length portraits, and often distressing texts that frame them, express some of the confusion and isolation of her illness. Yet, rather than being depressing, the work is intimate and inspiring.

The paintings fuse the decorative aspect of King’s previous ceramic work with bleak subject matter - melancholia, drug abuse, destructive relationships. The painting style is intensely colourful, almost Fauvist, featuring the artist in a variety of starched and patterned clothing often holding a 'prop' – a knife, pills, a tube of paint.

The ‘poster-like’ composition of King’s paintings points to an innate faculty for and interest in design, perhaps influenced by the work and collections of her father, the designer and photographer David King. 'Life so Far' demonstrates a keen interest in many disparate sources, from haute couture and classical Indian portraiture, to Victoriana, Art Nouveau and the decorative arts.  

King has suffered from bipolar disorder her entire life. The illness, which was not officially diagnosed until 1999, has on occasions unbalanced her life to such a degree that she has attempted suicide. She grew up in the bohemia of late 1960s north London and has subsequently spent prolonged periods in Amsterdam, Berlin, China, India, Moscow and in Portugal, where she modelled for Paula Rego. She can be seen as the stepmother in Rego’s 1995 work ‘Snow White and her Stepmother’

King studied at the prestigious Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam (1989-92) and achieved early success for her ceramics, being the only professional artist-in-residence at Lisbon’s renowned ‘azulejos’ museum of tiles (1993-95). She also studied at the École National Supérieure Des Arts Décoratifs (1991) and at AR.CO in Lisbon (1993-94).

She has had exhibitions of painted tiles at Lisbon’s Gallery Ratton (African Blues, 1994 and Equus, 1999); and the Dutch Tile Museum, Nederlanse Tegelmuseum in Otterlo (Portuguese Diary, 1998). She was artist-in-residence at the Zoological Museum in Amsterdam studying and painting butterflies and insects (1997-98).

The Riflemaker book to accompany the Josephine King exhibition will feature essays by the artist and Adrian Dannatt, writer, curator and regular contributor to The Art Newspaper.

‘Life So Far’ is co-curated by Virginia Damtsa and Tot Taylor with Adrian Dannatt. Press information: Jeanette Ward - 020 7734 4800 - 07729 930 812 – jeanette@theresasimon.com
Tot Taylor - Riflemaker - 07792 706 494

Visitor information:
Opening hours: Monday - Friday 10am – 6pm, Saturday 11am – 6pm
Riflemaker 79 Beak Street, London W1 Telephone: 020 7439 0000  Website: Riflemaker.org

Riflemaker is co-directed by Virginia Damtsa & Tot Taylor.