A playfully bright energetic exhibition full of striking Victorian inspired females, which bring up questions surrounding the fragility of immortality and challenges the ideology of beauty.
Roo Abrook is a figurative artist heavily inspired by Pre-Raphaelite portraits, the Dadaism and Surrealist art movements, whilst also combining old literature and femineity into her artworks. She beautifully depicts mainly women and children by using disregarded vintage Victorian photographs. As well as this, Roo collects Edwardian postcards that feature female actresses and performers, this is very significant to her artwork as she aims to bring disregarded female figures of the past back to life into something worth valuing again. Within her work, she investigates and poses self-reflecting questions about the subject matter of beauty, youth, and time.
Roo’s work is heavily inspired by her teenage years where she was obsessed with magazines, such as, ID and punk/new wave publications. By recycling old magazines to use as the framework of all her pieces she has developed some distinctive techniques, Roo creates layers with music paper and past graphite drawings, then screen prints onto tissue paper and adds final touches with neon spray paint, varnish and hand-painting with acrylic paints and touches of gold leaf. As explained in her own words:
“I use Antique book pages within my work, unwanted with little value that I feel have a beauty and combine these with contemporary materials such as screen prints, digital prints, photocopies (that’s retro now) and neon spray paints to play with timelines. I am continually developing these timelines by investigating beauty, time, youth and ageing.”
There is an individual and creative use of many mediums which all come together to create her lovely pieces. Roo’s work and concepts showcase her rare creative depth, which makes her work so unique and collectable. Her style and vison appeal to a very interesting audience, attracting buyers from all over the world to generate a global demand for Roo’s art pieces.
The composition of Roo’s modern portraits portray an overall feeling of natural strength and beauty mixed with the fragility of the brief and every changing life that we all share.
Roo has produced artwork for record releases, gallery shows and original commissions for well-known musicians’ homes, such as, Gem Archer (formerly Oasis, presently Noel Gallaghers High Flying Birds) to produce canvases for Liam Gallagher, Nicole Appleton (All Saints) and Andy Bell (formerly Oasis, presently Ride). Roo’s paintings have been steadily selling to collectors with works being regularly sold at Art Fairs in London’s Hampstead and Battersea, Hong Kong and Singapore.
Roo’s most current solo show exhibition titled, ‘Behind Her Eyes,’ is being showcased by, Turner Art Perspectiveat our Shenfield gallery. Starting from the 25th of September 2021, and running for 4 weeks. This show will include all of Roo’s newest masterpieces, including 6 canvas works, and 2 editions of 20 prints.