Bigger Pleasures

“This window was found on the street in Amsterdam, and bought to my London studio. The found window is painted on the reverse so the viewer looks through the glass to view the painting.

I work across painting, photography, assemblage and installation. My research involves collecting and documenting places and objects which have been left to waste: I photograph abandoned buildings and places, I collect rubbish from the street and respond to this material by incorporating painting and assemblage. In fact, Jo Dennis is a hoarder.

The works I produce address themes related to home, shelter, memory and mortality. Found objects and studio waste are catalysts for work which addresses our emotional connection to places, the transformation of surfaces and objects and how this relates to temporality. I aim to interrogate how a sense of belonging is realised in connection to places of ruination and dereliction. A great part of my focus is on the role paint plays in these spaces and processes, and then how this surface materiality and texture conveys the passing of time. I seek to amplify the sensibilities embodied in these structures, remnants and residual materials in paint.” - Jo Dennis, 2021

Jo Dennis is a British multi-disciplinary artist working and living in London. 

Accolades

Education:  BA in Fine Art and Contemporary Critical Theory at Goldsmiths College, London. Currently studying MA Painting at Royal College of Art in London.

Exhibitions:  Jo Dennis has been in solo and group exhibitions both in the UK and internationally including at The Royal Academy of Arts and the ICA London. 

Recent exhibitions: Autonomous Zone, a solo show with Sid Motion Gallery, Hurry Up Please, It’s Time, at Seen Fifteen Gallery London, A Kind of Solid Liquid, a solo show at Sid Motion Gallery London, a solo presentation at Photo London. In 2020 she self published her artists book I touched this with my hand, I touched that with my eye with an essay by David Campany. She has been featured in the Financial Times Magazine, British Journal of Photography, The Washington Post, Unseen Platform, The Art Newspaper, Port, Fad Magazine and AnOther. Dennis is the co- founder of Asylum and Maverick Projects, an artist-led organisation running project spaces in London. From 2016-18 she founded and curated AMP Gallery, a not for profit exhibition space. She is the co-founder of Peckham 24 Photography Festival and was the recipient of a Grants for the Arts from Arts Council England.

@joeddenis
jo-dennis.com