Mandy Payne is a Sheffield based painter/ printmaker whose work is inspired by urban landscape, particularly Brutalist architecture, social housing, and issues of gentrification. For her paintings she works with materials that have a direct physical connection to the sites she depicts, namely concrete and spray paint. For her prints she works largely in stone lithography.
Mandy has exhibited widely across the UK, notably being regularly included in the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition from 2014 – 2024, showing consistent recognition by leading curators. In 2025, she presented a solo exhibition at Stapleford Granary and was included in the Jackson’s Art Prize exhibition at Bankside Gallery. Her work has received multiple awards, including the ING Discerning Eye North of England Regional Prize in 2025, an Arts Council England award in 2019 and she has been shortlisted multiple times for the John Moores Painting Prize.
Your work is deeply rooted in the urban landscape: what first drew you to cities as your primary subject matter?
I have always been interested in architecture, but it was work that I began making during my Fine Art degree course over 15 years ago that led me to focus on Brutalist buildings and when I started using concrete as a substrate in an attempt to depict the ever-changing flux of our urban environments.
Mandy Payne, Monument to Modernism, spray paint on concrete, 20 x 20cm
What is it about Brutalist and Modernist architecture that continues to resonate with you artistically?
I love the rawness, the stark geometry, and the sculptural monolithic scale of many brutalist buildings. I am also interested in the utopian idealism behind many post war structures that were frequently designed for public use and embodied social progress and egalitarianism.
You’ve spoken about being drawn to the un-refurbished areas: what stories or emotions do you feel those spaces hold?
A lot of the places I paint were people’s homes and there is something really poignant about these spaces, often now unoccupied and boarded up, the previous residents decanted. Traces and markers of their past lives often remain and evoke (in me) powerful feelings of loss and transience.
How do you approach capturing the idea of “transition” in a place that is simultaneously being erased and rebuilt?
I often spend many years focusing on an area that is in transition. Frequently, the gentrification of say a housing estate can take decades and every time I visit something has altered slightly, the site is in a continual state of change. I try to focus on how the place was before redevelopment began if I can, then look at areas of it undergoing demolition or alteration, and then record the final new build, although this depends completely on the location I am observing.
Left: Mandy Payne, Urban Windows | Right: Mandy Payne, Sunlight and Shadows
Both included in AOAP Projects' Summer Show Illuminated at the Royal Society of Arts
Are there particular buildings or locations you feel an urgency to document right now?
I always have buildings on my radar that have failed to get listed and that are under threat of demolition.
There was an estate in Coventry (Spon End Estate) that I just managed to get to and take photos of shortly before it was bulldozed (although I have yet to make work from it yet). I have also visited the South Kilburn, Robin Hood Gardens and Aylesbury Estates in London, many times over the past 10 years to document their loss and eventual demolition.
Can you talk about the pieces you’ve made for the AOAP Projects Summer Show at the Royal Society of Arts & how they responded to the theme ‘illuminated?’
I found the brief of ‘Illuminated’ hard to fit the type of work I make, which is often quite bleak! I’ve thus made 2 pieces, one ‘Urban Windows’ which is more typical of the paintings I usually make (which therefore doesn’t really respond at all to the theme!) It is of some windows in a derelict row of shops which were filled to the brim with rubbish and ephemera, their abstract composition just caught my eye. It’s painted on a found tile with oil paint and spray paint.
The second, ‘Sunlight and Shadows’ I made to fit the brief and was from a photo I took whilst on holiday in Spain. It’s on a little square of cast concrete and painted with spray-paint and oils.
Mandy's work is featured as part of the AOAP Projects' Summer Show Illuminated at the Royal Society of Arts. The exhibition is on view from the 10th - 23rd June at the RSA and on our website.
Questions by Kate Reeve-Edwards
Banner image credit: Isy+Leigh Anderson
