Kiera Bennett paints places and things she knows. Particular places that inspire fleeting moments of heightened awareness, clarity, fantasy and feelings of solitude or harmony. To attempt to make memories and these elusive sensations tangible is simply the starting point and possibly futile but then it becomes about painting and that’s something else. Other things enter, like other paintings, art history, music, film, literature…
Landscape has been a recurring theme in Bennett’s work for the last few years, first represented in her intricate paper collages and more recently in large scale paintings – characters, often solitary, both human and animal drift in and out of the work. Bennett sources references from childhood vacations, novels, fairytales and landscape painting to recent direct experience of urban parkland and rural landscapes. With this imagery in mind she creates timeless environments that evoke the sublime and pathways that lead us toward the unknowable.
Education
The Royal College of Art MA Painting 2000-02
Oxford University, The Ruskin School of drawing and Fine Art
BA Hons Fine Art 1990-93
Mid Cheshire College of Art & Design, Northwich,
Foundation Art Course 1989-90
Cocheme Fellowship, Byam Shaw School of Art 2004Past Tutors Iclude
John Stezaker, David Rayson, David Thorpe, Peter Doig, Doug Allsop, Graham Crowley, Venessa Jackson,
Selected Exhibitions
The Past is History Changing Role Gallery, Naples and Rome 2008
Golden Record Collective gallery 2008
Bad Moon Rising Rockwell Gallery, London 2007 Solo Show
The Future Can Wait – Charlie Smith and NLK London 2007
Nature and Society - Dubrovacki Muzeji (Dubrovnik Museums)Croatia 2007
Fuckin’ Brilliant! Maji Yabai! Tokyo Wondersite, Shibuya, Tokyo Dec05/Jan06
Cocheme Fellow Show at Byam Shaw School of Art, London 2004
John Moores 23 The Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool 2004
Collage Bloomberg Space, March 2004
One Night Stand Pearl Projects, El Montan Motor Hotel, San Antonio, Texas -2004
Full English MOT, London 2003
New Contemporaries Static, Liverpool and Barbican, London 2002
Publications
Nature and Society, Catalogue, Text by Richard Dyer, Dubrovacki Muzeji (Dubrovnik Museums)Croatia 2007
Guardian Guide, Pick of the Week, ‘Bad Moon Rising’, Jessica Lack, March 2007
John Moores 23
Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2002
