NO PLACE LIKE HOME

‘No Place Like Home’ is an online solo exhibition by Alexis Soul-Gray featuring 3 new original works, spanning the breadth of the artists current mediums of choice; collage, drawing, printmaking and painting. The works continue the artists exploration of grief, loss, memory, nostalgia and the family unit within a harmonious balance of abstraction and figuration.

"I have recently been re examining the relationship my mothers death in 2006 has had on me long term. Her death was a little different as she took a plane to Zurich, Switzerland and drank a lethal barbituate drink in a 'clinic' that looked more like an ex council flat than the sparkly white medical ward I had expected. The months leading up to her assisted suicide were extremely dark, leaving myself, my father and my siblings with unspeakably horrific memories to carry for the rest of our lives. She was terrified of illness and death, she was morbidly depressed. She never came to terms with what was happening and perhaps that is partly why the experience has had such long lasting affects on me and my work. After her death I spiralled into a depressive state and was diagnosed with PTSD...I had nobody to turn to except an on/off boyfriend who I was falling excruciatingly in love with, entangling my feelings for him with the trauma of this part of my life. I was terrified of losing him after losing her. I did lose him and I did lose her."
Excerpt from Alexis Soul-Gray's blog 16th August 2020

After the traumatic loss of her own mother, Soul-Gray uses her practice to explore loss; loss of a person and the displacement of love reserved for that person. Using scenes of domesticity from wide ranging sources such as knitting patterns and vintage ephemera, the artist questions notions of motherhood and home. Yet her works are warm, reclaiming the lost characters, releasing them into a new contemporary future. These figures appear softly, tarnished with the decay of passing time, both nostalgic and raw. The artists sympathetic hand and enthrallingly soft loose lines rendering ghostly images from her soft palette to give the viewer a sense of ease amidst the emotively charged works.
‘No Place Like Home’ forms part of an ongoing series entitled 3 Works For 3 Weeks, an innovative take on the traditional solo exhibition, promoting slow looking and true engagement with the artist, the artworks and the concepts behind them. Each exhibition in the series features 3 artworks alongside text, detail images and source material to give an intimate insight into the artworks. Each exhibition runs for just 3 weeks and invited artists are all currently working within the UK.