“They meet between me” showcases wobbly bodies, amalgamations of plump, jelly-like forms which are set against cinematic backdrops. Women take centre stage, but their expressions remain hard to read, existing somewhere between shock and pleasure. The exhibition explores Kellaway’s fascination with the display of women; the sensuality, the seduction, and the voyeurism that entangles us. In her paintings, the men appear alien and distorted, sometimes to the point where their appearance isn’t even clear, but their presence is always felt.

Kellaway’s practice explores pleasure and pain, archetypal characteristics of the woman under the pornographic lens. Kellaway also finds this interplay exists in understanding her Catholic education; a dizzying time infused with the weight of feminised religious guilt; the virtue of suffering, stigmata, and original sin. But girlhood remained a fruitful ground. For Kellaway, it offered a lasting love of pop-culture and an obsession with Sofia Coppola, Tracey Emin, Chantal Joffe, Beryl Cook, and Marie Laurencin, which she continues to carry with her. Recurring imagery in her work includes dinner tables, bare chests, excessive patriotism, sprawled gendered performance, and unrequited gazes. At heart, Kellaway is a fan, a collector reassembling contemporary and historical homage which has seeped into her brain. She uses her palette of marshmallowy-pinks and custard-yellow to sweeten and seduce the viewer into her sardonic and sexually transgressive perspective.

Her influences range from Pauline Boty, Ella Walker, Helen Verhoevenr, R. B. Kitaj, and Christina Quarles, to Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and Miriam Cahn. 

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Pembroke College wishes to inform you this show contains full (painted) nakedness

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Instagram: @susankellaway.studio

Website: www.susankellaway.com