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 Ocean Terminal, Flatland Projects, Bexhill-on-Sea (2025); Transplant, Phillida Reid, London (2024); Celia Hempton, Southard  Reid, London (2020); Art Night with ICA London (2016); Gwangju Biennale (2014); Vug, Neuer Aachener Kunstverein, Aachen, Germany (2013) and the  performances Tor at Fiorucci Art Trust, Stromboli and Serpentine Galleries, London (2016). Selected group exhibitions include Finding Our Blue Sky, Lisson  Gallery, London (2025); The Living End: Painting and Other Technologies, 1970 - 2020, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (2024 - 2025); British Art Show 9 (touring), Aberdeen Art Gallery and The Box, Plymouth (2021 - 2022); My Life in the Metaverse, Abu Dhabi Art, Manarat 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 122, 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.