180. Harriet Gillett - Icon of a prophet (After Ofili, after Blake)

2025
Oil and spray paint on canvas
10 x 15 x 1.9 cm

Harriet Gillett’s luminous, layered paintings respond to the speed and saturation of contemporary visual culture, offering spaces of reverie, contemplation, and emotional reflection. Drawing on the devotional aesthetics of Western religious painting alongside the emotive colour and atmosphere of post-Impressionism, her work exists between traditional and contemporary visual languages. Through intimate depictions of friends, communities, and symbolic imagery, Gillett creates paintings that bridge personal memory with broader emotional resonance.

Her use of spray paint, translucent veils of colour, and layered surfaces creates a tension between permanence and transience, echoing the unstable boundaries between past and present, memory and imagination, intimacy and performance. The paintings often feel suspended between dream and observation, balancing tenderness with ambiguity.

Originally from East Yorkshire, Gillett lives and works in London. She completed an MA in Fine Art with Distinction at the City & Guilds of London Art School (2021–2022), following a Graduate Diploma at City & Guilds (2019–2020), and a First Class degree in English Literature at the University of Edinburgh (2013–2017).

Solo exhibitions include A Clearer Morning at Fred Levine, Bruton, Somerset (2026); If Paris Was a Woman with Hotsheet x Hooligan Art Dealer at Maison Bertaux, London (2025); and This Must Be The Place at LAMB Gallery, London (2024).

Duo and trio exhibitions include I Is Another with Ruby Swinney at New Normal Projects, Cromwell Place, London (2023); You Are Here at Staffordshire Street Gallery, London (2023); and The Places We Go with Iona Hutley at Soho Revue, London (2022).

Selected group exhibitions include Ethereal at Edji Gallery, Brussels (2026); Presently Fragmented curated by Edoardo Monti at Hurst Contemporary, London (2026); Artists for LA Fire Relief at Makeroom LA; A Beacon Against the Cold at LBF Contemporary, London (2025); Ah, the Mark on the Wall, It Was a Snail at Petitree, Shenzhen (2025); In Praise of Shadows at Melzi Fine Art, Milan (2025); Apéritif at Palazzo Monti, Brescia (2025); The Taste of Bitter Almonds at Tube Culture Hall, Milan (2025); Surrealism and Witchcraft at LAMB Gallery, London (2023); New Contemporaries at Camden Arts Centre, London and Grundy Art Gallery, Blackpool (2023); Down to Earth at Badr El Jundi Gallery, Madrid (2023); Babelle at Spazio Musa, Turin (2023); The Picture at Brooke Benington, London (2023); and When I Was Walking on the Edge of a Teacup at Roman Road, London (2023).

Awards and distinctions include being shortlisted for the ACS Studio Prize (2025), selection for New Contemporaries (2023), receiving the Federation of British Artists Mentorship Prize (2021), and being shortlisted for the Ingram Prize (2020). Residencies include Palazzo Monti, Brescia (2024), Goodeye Projects, London (2024), Xenia, Hampshire (2025), and Koik, Mexico City (2026).