Ruby Bateman, 'To the front' 2023

Ruby Bateman is a London based visual artist working in an expanded print practice. She uses painting, drawing, film and ceramics to discuss the maternal. In her drawings and paintings, Ruby explores her maternal ambivalence with a richly colourful and symbolic visual language, often (re)depicting her sculptural and film work. With super 8 film and photography, Ruby choreographs (dis)connections and gestures between her body and sculptures, reflective of her complex personal and political relationship with ‘the mother’.

This work is taken from a body of work Ruby created on the theme of pilgrimage, where Ruby contemplates the shape and sites of her forthcoming pilgrimage around her birthplace - the U.K, the transformative notion of journey and what it means to live as a pilgrim in today's society in the face of climate change.

'To The Font' imagines a walk to a Cathedral, one of Ruby's favourite spaces to visit, where she encounters a font with new animal friends along the way. 

Original acrylic painting on cotton canvas.