Abstract painter and winner of Southwark Park Galleries’ 2024 Annual Open Jess Blandford presents a series of small, intimate works alongside a new site-specific installation, where unruly paintings spill onto the gallery wall. Using colour, erasure and layered marks, Blandford reflects on the labour of care to explore the complex physical, mental and emotional work involved in family life, drawing upon her own experience of care-giving.

Blandford was selected by Southwark Park Galleries alumni artists Joy Labinjo and Paul Purgas as the winner of our 40th Annual Open in 2024 — London’s longest-running democratic exhibition and a rare opportunity for all artists at any stage of their career to submit work without a selection criteria.

This exhibition is generously supported by Arts Council England and Breckman & Company.

Artist Bio

Jess Blandford (b. 1973) is a British artist living and working in South East London. Her practice is focused on abstract drawing and painting, having studied painting at Camberwell School of Art and printmaking at the Royal College of Art. Preoccupied with familial roles, flawed structures and problematic expectations, her work is concerned with finding ways to make apparent the invisible, unpaid labour that holds family life together. She is interested in celebrating the small, mundane, messy, complex, repetitive acts that are the foundations of domestic life.

She is a founding member of FOLD Art Collective, whose mission is to generously give support, space and voice to the work of midlife women artists who are often overlooked in contemporary culture. She was selected for the Royal Academy of Arts Summer Exhibition in 2023 and 2024 and has exhibited at Morley Gallery, APT Gallery, Dulwich Picture Gallery and Safehouse Peckham.