Julia Bennett's practice encompasses a way to see, and a space to mourn, whilst seeking remediation. Each piece acts as an obscured timeline of a place, offering a lens to better see lands left neglected, and posing a way forward for the revival of our relationship with a bastardized ecosystem.
The work records an impossible present; a time of rupture, ghosts, possibilities. Bennett explores the paradox of ongoingness at the looming death of an empire. Paintings are stripped apart, only to be woven back together in attempt to resolve questions left unanswered. A distorted grid becomes the background to a new landscape; fragments of the original painting express glimmers of the past, layers of clay act as a gentle poultice, traces of new pigment predict a future birthed from hope or catastrophe. Rooting and reaching, like mycorrhizal networks and plumes of fire, each movement represents the continuous cycle of growth and collapse. Rage, beauty, grief, and healing all coalesce into these webs. Ghosts among the living, held together by invisible strings, reflect our entanglements with a colonized and over-consumed earth, and bridge the threshold to imagined futures.
Julia Bennett (b. 1995) is an American artist living and working in California. Bennett has completed a Master's in Painting from the Royal College of Art (2022) and a Bachelor's of Fine Art in Photography/New Media (2017). Recent exhibitions and residencies include; Leafmold Paradise, Union Pacific (london, UK), New Abstraction: 6 Proposals, One Trick Pony (LA), High House Residency (Norfolk, UK), Streams of Consciousness, Particle Collection X Phillips (Miami), Conversations in Colour, Pilgrims Contemporary (London), the Royal College of Art Degree Show 2022 (London), Vanguards, Unit London (London), Clovermill Artist Residency (Giessenburg, NE), Open Call, Wilder Gallery (London), Bucolia, Blue Shop Cottage (London), and Convergence and Collapse, a duo show at The Grove Collective (London).