RACHEL MERCER
IN THE CITIES LIFE IS SMALLER
An exhibition of new paintings by figurative oil painter Rachel Mercer
A new series of paintings by Rachel Mercer featuring people observed in and around the old Stratford shopping centre, located on the doorstep of the artist’s Stratford studio. The works explore the ubiquitous British shopping centre as spaces which impact our sense of humanity and how we perceive our own lives and the lives of others. The artist captures the energy and the particularity of people's movements and gestures as they go about their lives, she captures the interactions between people whilst also showing the vulnerability, longing and charm of each individual.
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Rachel lives and works in London, UK
Born in Cambridgeshire, Mercer studied at Cardiff School of Art and Design graduating in 2012 before being awarded the postgraduate programme at The Royal Drawing School. Since 2014 she has been a painter working in London. She has exhibited in the UK and China. Stand-out exhibitions include: Christie's London, 2013: Mercer Chance Gallery and Mandell's Gallery 2018: San Mei Gallery 2019: Fitzrovia Gallery 2022 and Aleph Contem-porary 2023. Shortlisted for the Ruth Borchard Prize and Waverton Art Prize (2020): Prize winner of the Hampstead Art Society Prize, 2022. Selected for the NEAC and Hampstead Art Society and The Gallery at Green & Stone Summer Exhibition 2023. She had work purchased for the Royal Collection by HM Charles III.
In November 2023 Mercer exhibited some works in Hatton Garden (Vivienne Roberts Projects) and is also taking part in a group show in an art fair in Athens (H-M-S Platform Projects) In March 2024, she will be having a solo show ‘In The Cities Life Is Smaller’ at The Gallery at Green & Stone.
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Shopping centres like the old Stratford shopping centre with a Lidl, Sainsbury’s, Poundland, Iceland, Macdonald's and JD sports are ubiquitous within the UK. Stratford shopping centre became the subject of my work mainly because of its proximity to my studio but what also make it particularly interesting to me was the pitched-up stalls that go through the middle, creating space for both social and commercial interactions. There are the ‘1 pound bowl’ fruit sellers with blue plastic bags (unique to London I think), but also a stall that sells umbrellas and phone gadgets, another that sells just hats, others that sell: perfumes. clothes, bedding, and confectionery. The shopping centre combines both the average UK Highstreet with the vibrancy of a East London street market.
Since last year I have been going to the shopping centre and secretly sketching the people - it was easy to remain quite anonymous in such a busy thoroughfare; it was this which initially attracted me to draw there. I took the drawings back to the studio and painted from them. I made some paintings that recreated what I had seen in a more straightforward way: a man focused on peeling an orange he had just purchased from the fruit sellers, a blue plastic bag around his wrist (‘Peel’) Some of the paintings became amalgamations/collages of different people (‘Charge’) made from my head, in an attempt to make the paintings feel closer to the experience of being in the shopping centre.
I wanted the paintings to achieve a sense of character and movement. I was also interested in the floor, arranging the figures on the tilting plane which became a stage or arena to contain the strange performance of daily life. The earlier paintings are nearly all floor and no horizon. I realised that this reflects both the downward gaze of shoppers but also reflected how I initially viewed those spaces - my eyes never went higher than the eye-level of other people. The shopping centre floor glares and echoes; the people in their black puffer jackets furnish the once-lustrous, white functional flooring.
From my village I see as much in the Universe as you can see from earth,
And so my village is as large as any town,
For I am the size of what I see
And not the size of my height...
In the cities life is smaller
Than here in my house on top of this hill.
The big buildings of cities lock up the view,
They hide the horizon, pulling our gaze far away from the open sky.
They make us small, for they take away all the vastness our eyes can see,
And they make us poor, for our only wealth is seeing.
Poem by Fernando Pessoa (Alberto Caeiro VII) From the collection ‘A Little Larger Than The Entire Universe’ translated by Richard Zenith (Penguin 2006)
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Education
Postgraduate Diploma, The Royal Drawing School 2013
Bachelor Degree (First Class Hons), Cardiff Metropolitan University 2012
Foundation Diploma (Distinction), Cardiff Metropolitan University 2008
Awards and Residencies
2023 –Shortlisted for the NEAC prize, London
2022- Dumfries House Residency – Royal Drawing School
2022 -Prize winner Hampstead Society Art Prize
2022 -Longlisted for the Waverton Art Prize
May 2021 -Shortlisted for Ruth Borchard Self-Portrait Prize
October 2019 – Covid relief bursary awarded by Bow Arts.
June 2019 – Two-month Residency in Chengdu, China awarded by The Royal Drawing School (London) and Elm Education (China) in partnership with San Mei Gallery, London.
September 2014 – 2-week residency at Dumfries House Scotland awarded by The Royal Drawing School.
Selected Exhibitions
Dec 2023 – ‘Mixed, Unmastered’ Islington Arts Factory, London
Nov 2023 – ‘Don’t Look Back’ Vivienne Roberts Projects, 53 Hatton Garden.
Aug 2023 – Gallery Green and Stone, Summer Exhibition, Chelsea London
July 2023 – Hamstead Art Society Summer Exhibition, D contemporary Mayfair, London
June 2023 – NEAC annual exhibition, Mall Galleries London
Dec 2022– ‘Bread and Games’ 3 person show, Aleph Contemporary, London
Aug 2022 – “As it was, As it will be =As it is” 4 person show Fitzrovia Gallery, London
October 2021- Work selected for Bow Open competition, exhibited at Nunnery Gallery
Sept 2021- ‘Within Without’ Two Person Show at the Crypt Gallery, London
May 2021 – Ruth Borchard Self Portrait Prize exhibition. Coventry Cathedral
Dec 2020 – ‘This is Where We Meet’ Group exhibition at Carousel Gallery, London (Select-ed Guardian exhibition of the week)
Sept 2020/2021- Art Car Boot Fair (Virtual exhibition). Online art fair.
July 2020- ‘Reaction in Seclusion’ – Virtual group exhibition curated by Beatrice Hassell- McCosh.
June 2020- ‘Inside Out’ – Solo exhibition of works on paper curated by Megan Garrett-Jones Ramsgate, UK
Dec 2019 - ‘Fresh Eyes’ Exhibiting a series of oil paintings made after a two-month resi-dency in China, curated by Ludovica Bulciolu, San Mei Gallery, London
Sept 2019 – ‘Fresh Eyes’ Exhibiting a series of oil paintings made whilst in China at Yiie Gallery, Chengdu China.
May 2019 – Group Show Mendell’s Gallery, Norwich
October 2018 - ‘Babes in the Orchard' - Joint show at Mercer Chance Gallery, London
March 2018- Group exhibition ‘Through the Looking Glass: contemporary Self Portraits’, Mercer Chance Gallery.
October 2017 - Joint Exhibition with Enya Lachman-Curl, Mercer Chance Gallery, London
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Here is frontline figure painting for the 2020s - raw with a kick, like a jump in cold water. A subtle mind takes a running leap into the Eastend's shopping centre cum indoor market, the Stratford Centre. Look at the way the foot of a scrapping schoolkid alights on the canvas edge in Duel. That's awkward, in a sense. It prods us: 'This is a made rectangular object, remember. Not a photodocumentary, but a bunch of muscular decisions taken in tight confines.' We're jolted from our smiling at a street comedy of rolled-up papers weaponized, our empathy with that blurry onlooker we glimpse foreground left. A blurriness that's awkward also - but likewise, it's a reality check. 'I paint what got through to me', Rachel Mercer implies, 'not what didn't.' Because before and after showing us the street, a painting will always be mind aligned with muscle.
What sly moves that combination makes here. Plunging into the Stratford Centre, built in 1974 (pre-Westfield and Olympic developments), the painter is stripped of the fallback handhold of tone. Overhead lighting systems and gleaming flooring minimize the gradations that suggest body volume and spatial recession. Puffa jackets and sportswear further compact the human units, the customer footfall, into so many cut-outs. Mercer's eye swims in and out and right up close between those units - see her terse snatched sketches - and then in her studio she restages the shock of encounter in blurts and forward bounds. Brushwork that wins brawls with itself. Look how the other fighter, or the righthand woman in Pigeon - the one with the red trolley - declare themselves at us, instantly readable, almost in contradiction of the colour information. Manet and Rembrandt would respect what's happening there.
Figure painting is old and new and forever. People paint people wondering what entities they themselves are. Odd activity, undeniably, and potentially uncomfortable - who does this human drone think she is, swooping in among the East End consumers? But that question is close to what Mercer's asking herself. What is there for her to know of the mother with the baby carrier in Charge? Neither her face, maybe, nor her name. What matters more deeply, however, is what both women share: strength to stand, strength to bear, animation, mobility. Fellow-feeling drives these unruly, lively paintings. Pretty is not what they aim at. Where they touch down is joy.
