Here comes the Sun - Director’s July picks

As the mercury soars and the long-awaited splendour of summer unfolds, we turn to nature to embrace its light and warmth, and the promise of restoration and renewal we have been craving. Vibrant colours and shapes dominate the season as the effervescent beauty of the sun, sky and sea dwarf us.
July’s Director’s Picks showcases new works from graduates and current NewBloodArtists’ portfolios from the last couple of months. An immersion back into the world, a sense of fluidity and unfurling after a challenging, isolating winter. Spring has bloomed and paved the way for Summer’s optimistic new beginnings – a healing reemergence and time of connectivity and rediscovery.
Many of this month’s selections channel the season’s new growth with vibrant and energising colour. A refreshing lime green dances through Brockhill 23’s neon-hued portrayal of flora and fauna by Evie Banks. Audrey Corbelli’s Summer Feeling perfectly plays with these zesty, optimistic tones – inviting the viewer’s immersion.
We bask in the warm, golden glow of Upside Down and Inside Out (yellow) by Katie Carter, an abstract expression encouraging us to shape our ambiguous new reality. The inviting golden hues beckon us in to experience the intimacy of Katherine Benson’s A Yellow Dress, the subject occupying a space suspended between the security and entrapment of lockdown. This isolation is echoed in the vivid tones of Studio Interior by Seth Marshall where the subject is negated from the image – we feel both connected and detached from it. Our notions of comfort and security are taunted further as an everyday houseplant in Tyler Watson’s She Speaks Through Golden Light takes on a sinister undertone.
After an overbearing period of isolation and stillness, Rosemary Burn’s fluid yet pensive Flight and Passenger evoke notions of moving forward and travel – a sense of reflection with an underlying trepidation. Sensations of movement and change are captured both as a calming snapshot in Artemis Louka’s Stillness and as a dizzying blur in In the air 3 by Iryna Kitaieva.
Elsewhere in the collection, our focus shifts from the vastness of nature to an intimate lens on the subject. We are provoked by the flamboyance and awkward posturing of Hattie Malcomson’s Black Panther, and by the voyeurism in Daisy Baker’s impressionistic Airbrush Hairbrush (Self Portrait As a Bug). Lorena Levi’s caricature portrayal of And After that my brother saved me offers a stark reminder of the effect that physical separation can have on a human connection.