Celia Hempton

Celia Hempton’s (b. 1981, Stroud, UK. Lives and works in London) practice spans painting, performance, and installation, contending with the ethics of looking, the consumption of images, and the bodily gaze, within the digital sphere in particular. Hempton’s output is defined by exercises in performative painting, and anchored in an awareness of her own positioning at the time of observing subjects and making work. Her work both challenges and acknowledges the tropes of history painting, both through the prism of digital mediation and from the immediacy of in-person encounters with sites characterised by a sense of disturbance, unpredictability, or instability.

Solo presentations include Transplant, Phillida Reid, London (2024); Art Night, ICA London (2016); Gwangju Biennale (2014); Vug, Neuer Aachener Kunstverein, Germany (2013) and the performances Tor at Fiorucci Art Trust, Stromboli and Serpentine Galleries, London (2016). Her work has been included in the group exhibitions The Living End: Painting and Other Technologies, 1970-2020, MCA Chicago (2024 - 2025); British Art Show 9, Hayward Gallery Touring, UK (2021 - 2022); My Life in the Metaverse, Manarat Al Saadiyat, UAE (2022); Art in the Age of the Internet, 1989 to Today, ICA Boston (2018); Kathy Acker: Who Wants to Be Human All the Time, Performance Space New York (2018); The Public Body .03, Artspace Sydney (2018) and Electronic Superhighway (2016 - 1966), Whitechapel Gallery, London (2016), amongst others. It is held in international private and public collections including The Museo de Arte Moderno de Medellin, Colombia, The British Council and the Government Art Collection, UK. 

© Celia Hempton. Photo: Soliloquy (Images Doc).