Anna Readman

The Fenton Arts Trust Artist in Residence 2007-08

The artist uses photorealism as a starting point for a deeper exploration of the same themes: man’s intervention with the natural environment as inevitable part of contemporary Western lifestyle fuelled by consumerism, and its effects on human condition. In her striking large-scale distorted views of shop fronts and supermarket car parks, fast-food chains and snack wagons, cheap hotels and bus stops, Readman creates unnerving multiple narratives of sadness. The artist comments on her practice: ‘The images derive from my interest in the mundane and the stereotypically English surroundings which form a backdrop to our everyday life. I attempt to make emphatic statements about Western society by capturing moments from our lives …. My paintings convey desolation, solitude and desertion and are deliberately emptied of people allowing the settings to speak for themselves.’