Bid the Gap

Introducing Lucy Cade

Lucy Cade is a painter living and working between Rutland and London. She makes work about the feminine and motherhood, currently with a focus on psychosis. Employing film imagery, she refers to the cult of cinema and its histories to interrogate the depiction of women. Her light-touch use of paint captures the seductive, fleeting qualities of film while also critiquing them. Women in films (directed by men) undergoing mental distress are painted in new combinations/contexts, suggesting secret narratives that are perhaps reflective of the embodied experience of psychosis, of which she has personal experience. The 'trace of trauma' is present in the work: she paints both through voile (creating trace images) and wet on wet, with a thick underlay of pale pink or blue, with more than a hint of the saccharin.  More figural than figurative, these marks perform the uncanny.  The painterly touch is tender but slippery; the images are fragile and slip from the gaze, oozing into pure paint. Physical structures traditionally used in religious contexts - tabernacles, folding screens - continue to appear in her sculptural practice, as well as associations and imagery with female religious figures such as the Virgin Mary.


Accolades:
Selected Exhibitions:

2023: Spaces, Places, an all-female group exhibition where I showed my sculpture/painting installation ‘The Consultation’; Artist/Parent, AIR Gallery, Manchester [group]; View of the Screen , pop-up at Gemini Cinema, London with Dark Yellow Dot [solo}; Stretch, Somers Gallery, London [group] (sculpture and paintings)

2022: Disrupted Icons (The Maternal Gaze), with soundscape by Eleanor Turner, The Crypt Gallery, London [solo]; Cartography of Care, Spilt Milk Gallery, Edinburgh [group]; Group Exhibition, Liliya Art Gallery, Putney, London [group]; I Felt That, The Tub, Hackney, London [group]

2021: The Supposition of Her Existence, Stamford Contemporary Arts [solo]; A Room of Her Own, Irving Contemporary, Oxford and online [group]; acting balance[d], Spilt Milk Gallery, online [group]; No Reserve, group show with InFems Art Collective at Leicester Contemporary [group]; Euphoric, Online Group Show curated by Josephine May Bailey

2020: Alone, Together online group show, curated by Shannon Skye Robinson; Spring Awakening online group exhibition, London Paint Club

2009 – 2019: During this period I was unable to work due to being in and out of hospital with acute Postnatal Psychosis and related illnesses

2008: OBSessions, Modern Art Oxford [group]; The Young Ones, Said Business School, Oxford [group]

2007: Metamorphosis, Surface Gallery, Nottingham [group]

2005: ING Discerning Eye, Mall Galleries, London

Residencies:

2022: Hotel Alphabet Residency (with InFems Collective), Marsciano, Perugia, Italy

2021: Artist-in-residence, Leicester Contemporary

Curation:

2023: Stretch (see details above), co-curator

2022: Material Presence, Fitzrovia Gallery, London

Teaching:

2015 – present: Private tutor in Art and Classics (Latin, Greek, Classical Civilisation, Ancient History) from GCSE to Degree

2023: Collage. Paint. Destress. (Workshop) at AIR Gallery, Manchester

2022: Artist Mentor for Spilt Milk Gallery Mentoring Programme, Edinburgh, working with artist-mothers

Awards:

2022: CuratorSpace Bursary #18; The Eaton Fund; The Whitebread Trust; Charlotte Bonham-Carter Award; Jackson’s Painting Prize 2022 (shortlisted)

2021: Developing Your Creative Practice Grant, Arts Council England Project: ‘The wounded oyster turns grit into pearl: processing trauma through painting’; The Alpine Fellowship Visual Arts Prize 2021 (shortlisted)

2005: ING Discerning Eye 2005, Purchase Prize (John Orbell); The Big Art Challenge, five TV (semi-finalist)

Publications:

2023: ‘Against Confinement’ article and images about Postnatal Psychosis in the I Felt That issue ACHE magazine (publication dedicated to the subject of pain). I Felt That was a collective of women artists set up in 2022 by Josephine May Bailey to address the complex issue of gendered pain and the gender pain gap that included meetings, knowledge-sharing, seminars, and an exhibition.