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Deborah Hobson
Lives and works in London, UK
Artist Statement
My objective as a Black artist and political activist is to create work which is socially engaged, stimulates or provokes radical dialogue or disturbs the status quo. The focus of my practice is mainly portraiture where I use graphite pencil, charcoal, pastel, watercolour, acrylic and oil paints on paper and canvas. I also experiment with expanded notions of portraiture through digital and analogue photography, video and collage. I produce nudes using similar mediums.
Currently, my portraits are based on original photographic images I take and some sourced stills. My subjects are prominent Black political campaigners whom I have worked with, friends and family and some well-known Black figures in popular culture and those who have been overlooked or ignored. There are instances where my drawings and paintings of people have been pegged to news stories that have captured my interest as a Black journalist.
Black oral and local community history and representations of it through paintings, drawings, collage and video has been an important feature of my work as a means of preserving an aspect of Black culture - the relationship between Black identity and place that might be subject to cultural erasure. The notion of psychogeography has provided a useful means by which to interrogate these issues. I am exploring how my art practice might serve as a counter or corrective narrative to the misrepresentation of historical Black political activism in Britain from the 1980s to present. Preservation of memories and the benefit of lucid dreams to the conscious self and creativity is also an area of interest.
CV
Education:
2020 to 2021 MA Fine Art, University of the Arts London, Chelsea College of Arts.
2017 to 2020 BA (Hons) Drawing, University of the Arts London, Camberwell College of Arts.
2012 to 2013 Studied under artist Tony Hull at City Lit, Keeley Street, London. Classes in Drawing Continued, Drawing into Painting, Painting Continued and Reading a paint surface.
Exhibitions:
2023, Publication in print and online, The Artist Talk Magazine.
2023, New Contemporaries exhibition, South London Gallery, 65-67 Peckham Road, London, SE15 8UH.
2022, New Contemporaries exhibition, Ferens Art Gallery, Queen Victoria Square, Carr Lane, HU1 3RA, Hull.
2022, Everywhere was nowhere and nowhere everywhere, Pi Artworks gallery, 55 Eastcastle Street, London W1W 8EG.
2022, SHOW, Chelsea College of Arts, 16 John Islip Street, London, SW1P 4JU.
2022, In Vision, Curious Kudu, 117 Queens Road, Peckham, London SE15 2EZ.
2021, Made in Arts London, Annual Exhibition, TM Lighting Gallery, 7 Cubitt Street, London WC1X 0LN.
2021, Postcards From Isolation, Contemporary Art Festival Premierentage, Innsbruck, Austria.
2021, Rally, MA Fine Art Show, Chelsea College of Arts.
2021, Concord Art prize exhibition, 180 the Strand, Temple, London WC2R 1EA
2021, Babylon Arts, I Matter online exhibition.
2021, Persist, Persevere, Be, IncuArts Gallery online exhibition.
2021, Stations 2021, Arts Chaplaincy Projects online exhibition.
2021, Heterotopia MA Chelsea Fine Art Festival online exhibition.
2020, Late at Tate Britain online exhibition.
2020, Leave only traces exhibition, the Copeland Gallery, Unit 91, Copeland Park, 133, Copeland Road, London SE15 3SN.
2019, New Camberwell Art 19/20, the Camberwell Student Led Gallery, UAL Camberwell College of Arts, London SE5 8UF.
2019, Fall Exhibition, studios, UAL Camberwell College of Arts, London SE58UF.
2019, Merge exhibition, CGP London: The Gallery, Southwark Park, London SE16 2UA.
2018, Hotel Elephant, Spare Street, London SE17 3EP in 2017.
2015, Selected for the BBC’s Big Painting Challenge exhibition at the Whitworth Gallery, Gallery Road, Manchester M15 6ER.
2014, Selected for the Dulwich Picture Gallery Open Exhibition, Gallery Road, London SE21 2UA.
Awards:
2022, New Contemporaries selected artist.
2021, Finalist, Concord Art Prize.
2020, Shortlisted for the UAL Frank Bowling Scholarship.
2015, The Eaton Fund grant.