In February 2012, Emma Richardson, the bassist and vocalist in Band of Skulls, presents her first solo exhibition in London, a series of paintings created in response to music by the Southampton three-piece whose debut album Baby Darling Doll Face Honey enjoyed widespread critical acclaim.

Releasing their second, much-anticipated album, Sweet Sour, in February, this exhibition marks another artistic highlight for Richardson, in a year that looks set to see the band’s meteoric rise continue.

The exhibition consists of two groups of works, corresponding to the first two albums by Band Of Skulls. The first series formed the artwork for their debut album, released in 2009, when Richardson’s paintings were photographed and then digitally manipulated to create the cover. The second reflects Richardson working with designer Vincent Toi and the creative team at The PHI Centre in Montreal, Canada, who by turn enlisted glass artists Cédric Ginart and Karina Guevin to make a glass sculpture inspired by her paintings. The resulting collaboration was photographed and became the cover image for the album.

Heavily influenced by painting masters including Cy Twombly and Lucian Freud, Richardson’s large-scale abstract paintings exploit the medium of oil on canvas to explore the nature of the human form, whilst making use of the visceral quality of the medium against the rough texture of the linen on which she works.

Richardson’s work is concerned with the ambiguous and the abstract, as well as the nature of symmetry and reflection.

Music is a key part of Richardson’s life, and she acknowledges a strong link between her musical and her artistic outputs, enlisting similar processes of re-working and revisiting until a finished product is reached within both disciplines. The relationship between the two mediums is a reciprocal marriage of creativity, with the music informing and inspiring her paintings, and the paintings lending the music a visual identity.

Check out Cruisin’ For A Brusin’ at the Londonewcastle Project Space, 28 Redchurch Street, E2 7DP
Thursday 2nd February – Sunday 12th February 2012.
Opening Times: Daily 11am-6pm