Artist Statement
Following a twenty-year career in brand marketing, my practice acts as a reverse-engineering of corporate persuasion. Influenced by Hannah Arendt’s writings on the banality of evil, my work explores the tension between manufactured joy and systemic fragility.
In my current YOLKO series, I appropriate the cheerful, saturated colours of supermarket packaging to expose the hidden realities of industrial confinement. I employ a flattened, simplified visual language of circles, heavy egg forms, and linear motifs. Rather than prescribing a single reading, I purposefully treat these recurring motifs as an open, emblematic vocabulary.
Working from a studio residency that shifts between a main church and its crypt, my practice is deeply rooted in painting but frequently expands into printmaking and mixed media. I rely on highly tactile material processes to disrupt the glossy, seductive veneers of consumerism. I physically press plastic egg cartons into paint to create dense, rhythmic relief patterns, and experiment with how pigment behaves across different surfaces, moving between intimately scaled rigid panels and bolder works on primed and unprimed canvas. Through this raw materiality, the work balances relentless structure with intuitive gesture, holding space for both systemic critique and radical hope.
Exhibitions include: Royal Academy of Arts Summer Exhibition 2021, Hastings Contemporary, Safehouse Peckham, Lido Stores Margate, Turps Banana 2023 Off-site Painters at Thames-Side Gallery and Terrace Gallery.
CV
Marcy Richardson
London, UK
marcy.richardson@gmail.com
marcyrichardsonart.com | @marcyrichardson
Artist Profile
A Canadian painter whose practice interrogates socio-political fragility and the aesthetics of containment. Utilising dense textures and flattened, emblematic forms, the work functions as a physical confrontation, challenging the viewer to look beyond the surface of everyday systems.
Solo & Duo Exhibitions
2025 REFUGE at the Crypt, The Crypt, St Mary’s Battersea, London, UK
2023 Roman Boudoir, Amata Benedict, London, UK
2022 Ancestor Calling, Amata Benedict, London, UK
2022 Displacement, Putney Library, London, UK
Selected Group Exhibitions
2026 Otherworldly, 54 The Gallery, London, UK
2025 How the Light Gets In, The Marylebone Gallery, London, UK
2025 Interim Exhibition, City and Guilds of London Art School, London, UK
2024 TRIBUTE: to our future silicon overlords, Safehouse Peckham, London, UK
2024 It Rose and It Fell, Terrace Gallery, London, UK
2024 The Entranced Essence, RupturEXIBIT Gallery, London, UK
2024 Fierce Scandal, The Lido Stores, Margate, UK
2023 derǝlict: art in the age of decline, Safehouse Peckham, London, UK
2023 The Waiting Room, Koppel Project Station, London, UK
2023 Turps Off-Site Programme Show: Painters, Thames-Side Studios, London, UK
2023 The Wild Thought, The Lido Stores, Margate, UK
2022 A Generous Space, Hastings Contemporary, Hastings, UK
2021 Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, Royal Academy of Arts, London, UK
2021 Lockdown Exhibition, Pump House Gallery, London, UK
2021 Mini Print Exhibition 2021, Southbank Printmakers, London, UK
Residencies
2024 – Present Artist-in-Residence, St Mary’s Church, Battersea, London, UK
Education
2024 – 2026 MA Fine Art, City & Guilds of London Art School, London, UK
2022 – 2023 Turps Banana Art School, Off-Site Programme, London, UK
2020 – 2022 Foundation Diploma in Art & Design, Putney School of Art, London, UK
Contact
For exhibitions, commissions, or enquiries: marcy.richardson@gmail.com
Instagram: @marcyrichardson