MAISIE MAUD BROADHEAD

at ART JERICHO

14 September – 12 October 2014

ART JERICHO presents photographs by MAISIE MAUD BROADHEAD, a young London artist, in a mini retrospective of her work from the past four years, to include Broadhead’s Women 2014. Last year Maisie Broadhead was awarded the Jerwood Makers Open, and this year The Brighton Pavillion Commission.

Broadhead’s work has evolved through narrative. Broadhead’s Women 2014, are inspired by the paintings of Johannes Vermeer. They are intimate portraits of women, lost in quiet moments, set within domestic context. Broadhead uses three generations of women from her immediate family to augment the sense of intimacy. Her photographs have a painterly quality – a softness and feeling of time spent, that is so very much at odds with the function of digital photography and the pace of modern life. The quietness and solitude that she captures in her work is strongly contrasted with the materialism and technology that she laces into her compositions. At first glance, we read distinct echoes of Vermeer, and then she catches us off guard as we discover the accoutrements of modern living.

Broadhead stages her photographs with exquisite precision and attention to detail. She recalls the beauty of Old Dutch Masters through her styling and theatre, and the simple detail in the clothing and fabrics. Her characters are decidedly 21st century, but the mood and sensibility, despite the ‘advancement’ of modernity, are timeless in the shared concerns and role of women in domestic pursuits.

A second series based on the paintings of Wilhelm Hammershoi is shown together with earlier work from the Jerwood series that secured her The Jerwood Makers Open in 2013