Art Düsseldorf

This series of works by Lydia Blakeley engages with the exploration of speculative realities, centered on the practice of painting while incorporating elements of sculpture and installation, such as sun loungers and cool box planters. Blakeley investigates the creation of new narratives and alternate timelines to express contemporary concerns, navigating the intersection between reality and fiction. Within a culture of technology and realism, there exists the potential for constructed fictions. Amid uncertainty and extended periods of lockdown and isolation, she has observed landscapes and spaces through cameras and screens, cultivating a distanced and disembodied way of perceiving the world. Her work explores the creation of surface worlds—aspirational spaces that provide both mental refuge and a sense of escape. Through painting, notions of worldbuilding, speculative realities, and constructed environments are examined.

This process involves genre-shifting and is subliminally influenced by key socio-political periods, from the economic globalization and growth of the 1950s and 1960s to the capitalist landscape of the mid-1980s to mid-1990s, and the subsequent acceleration of crises following events such as 9/11, the 2008 financial crash, Brexit, the Covid-19 pandemic, and ongoing global conflicts. Looking to the future while referencing the past, Blakeley’s work considers the social and psychological changes brought about by a state of perpetual anxiety in response to global events. The rise of spiritualism on social media, particularly after the lockdowns of 2020, is examined as a coping mechanism, where practices of divination and ritual function as forms of self-care. The algorithmic nature of social media is seen as leading users into a metaphysical rabbit hole, shaping contemporary engagement with uncertainty.

Through this research, Blakeley attempts to bridge the gap between polycrisis and the practice of painting as a means of making sense of the world—one that could itself be considered a form of self-care. Central to this inquiry is the role of painting in contemporary society: how it can serve as a tool for understanding the present and how it operates within new and emerging digital technologies. Her work investigates the exceptionalism of painting in the post-medium condition. Blakeley’s previous work has been included in significant exhibitions, such as Mixing It Up: Painting Today at the Hayward Gallery, London (2021), curated by Ralph Rugoff. This ambitious survey of contemporary British painting underscored the relevance of the medium as a technology for connecting to the past and exploring the present. In today’s fast-paced world, painting’s heterogeneous nature holds space for contemplation, its temporal layers and accumulation of actions preserving a sense of time and extending beyond the limitations of immediate perception.