Miranda Forrester

Overview
Miranda Forrester
Miranda Forrester, Affinity series #20, 2021 ,Oil and gloss on PVC over wooden stretcher, 41 x 31 x 3.8 cm. Courtesy of the artist and Tiwani Contemporary.
Miranda Forrester lives and works in London. She holds a BA in Fine Art Painting from the University of Brighton.
 
Forrester explores the queer Black female gaze in painting. Her work addresses the invisibility of Black queer women in the western art historical cannon, seeking to explore the plurality of queerness and blackness with an honest and sensitive approach.  
 
Her gestural style hovers between drawing and painting in application. Delicate, tender, visualisations of Black queer women in spaces where they are the most expansive versions of themselves. Domestic life and intimacy are sparsely defined and painted, alluding to a life in the process and event of unfurling and defining itself, capturing intimate moments of warmth, tenderness and insularity. 
 
Forrester's figures occupy their spaces with bold softness, authority and subtlety, in moments of calm and quietude, within compositions that include queer popular cultural and historical references in the form of collaged photo-transfer elements across selected areas of the canvas, polythene or polycarbonate surface plane. The latter materials commonly used in architectural construction, play a key role in Forrester's work, as the transparent surfaces allow viewers to peer through the depicted bodies, blending the changing physical environment with the imagined world of her paintings. 
 
The frames visible beneath the polycarbonate, mimic traditional canvas stretchers, and expose craftsmanship and labour as part of the visual experience of the work. This creates a sense of fluidity, inviting viewers to move in and around the paintings, fostering a deeper connection with the figures, noticing cast shadows referring to alternative narratives, and manifesting Forrester's intent to honestly represent her perspective and view on life and art as experienced by a queer, Black woman.
 
Recent exhibitions include: Conversations, Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, UK (group - 2024); In the Blood, Tiwani Contemporary, London, UK (group – 2024); Interiorities, Mariane Ibrahim Gallery, Chicago IL, USA (solo - 2024); In Praise of Black Errantry, Unit London, during the 60th Venice Biennale, Palazzo Pisani S. Marina, Venice, Italy (group - 2024); Together We Thrive, Culture& and Sotheby’s Institute of Art, in collaboration with Gallery OCA and venue Cromwell Place, London, UK (group – 2024); LEDA and the SWAN: a myth of creation and destruction, Victoria Miro Gallery II, London, UK (group - 2023); Arrival, Tiwani Contemporary, London, UK (solo - 2023); Like Paradise, Claridges Art Space, London, UK (group - 2023); Hauntology: Ghostly Matters, Mariane Ibrahim Gallery, Chicago IL, USA, (group - 2023); Somatic Markings, Kasmin, New York NY, USA (group - 2022); Our Land Just Like a Dream, Macaal, Marrakech, Morocco (group - 2022); The Company She Keeps, Tiwani Contemporary, Lagos, Nigeria (group - 2022); Hard as Nails, Quench Gallery, Margate, UK (group - 2022); At Peace, Gillian Jason Gallery, London, UK (group - 2021); Small is Beautiful, Flowers Gallery, London, UK (group - 2021); Sixty- Six London, St George’s Place, London, UK (group - 2021); Reality Check, Guts Gallery, London, UK (group - 2021); Poetic Sustenance,Tiwani Contemporary, London, UK (group - 2021); Abode, Guts Gallery, London, UK (solo - 2020). 
Download Artist's CV (PDF, opens in a new tab.)
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