Studio SPF "100% OK"
Press Release
Studio SPF Debut Solo Show
@ Dudley & Waltzer, 14th April 2022
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Sparking from a mutual admiration of each other’s practices - Tegan an abstract painter, Lottie a tattoo artist and illustrator, their combined works emerged as an antidote to lockdown boredom. Just a few months after having first met, a drunken night in Tegan’s apartment culminated in an attempt at painting on a bombastic scale. Ending up as their living room blind, the outcome served as a catalyst for a much longer journey.
Studio SPF makes use of references from the image-saturated digital landscape to prompt a form of role-play. Poses and gestures are mimicked, re-imagined and re-incorporated onto the canvas. Their contribution to the pictures are individuated yet highly integrated, Tegan creating the abstract planes upon which Lottie composes the androgonous figures. The context where bright shades of pinks, reds and blues are spatulated onto the canvas, creates textured volumes and geometric patterns that inform the figurative mark-making. The methodic dialogue echoes the worship of the partner, as the flick of a wrist reverberates the corners of a cube, the curve of a vase traces a band of angular swirls, and contrasting tiles are conceived through the inked chest of an enfant terrible.
Sharing a frame calls for a balance of boldness and care. Closely affiliated to improvisation and play, this is a theme that runs through the entire scope of their works. As evocative proposals spring from the strokes, Studio SPF’s unique collaboration fosters an energetic practice that celebrates the spur of the moment. The titles to their works, pulled from arbitrary advertising posts, slips of the tongue and reality TV
quotes, illustrates this notion of unrehersed spontaneity. ‘Small Tit Liberal Cunts’, ‘Waxed Vaxed and Fully Relaxed’, ‘I Lost My Green Hat on Fish Island’, depicts a scene of humble humour and ease. Revelling in the pleasures of consumption, performativity and the intimate, the inception of Studio SPF’s painting practice is one that reaps the rewards of the happy mistake.