Lisa Brice

b. 1968

Born in Capetown, South Africa in 1968; Lives and works in London, United Kingdom and Trinidad

I am drawn to the ambiguity that people and places can hold. Sometimes the compositions of my paintings feel like cinematic outtakes: the moments between directed actions, when the figures are 'on their own time,' self-involved, performing only for themselves or one another. — Lisa Brice, 2018

Artwork

Exhibitions

05.19–08.30.2021
Charleston Trust
Charleston Trust

Lisa Brice

11.21.2020–04.05.2021
Smoke & Mirrors
KM21

Lisa Brice

09.16–10.28.2017
Boundary Girl
Salon 94 Bowery

Lisa Brice

04.26–08.27.2018
Art Now
Tate Britain

Lisa Brice

Biography

Lisa Brice in her studio in London with Between This and That, 2017, right, and Boundary Girl (Natalie), 2009-2017, foreground.

Lisa Brice (b. 1968) is a painter whose influential body of work contests the misogynistic nature of figuration across the history of Western art. Echoing compositions of modernist stalwarts including Edgar Degas, Édouard Manet, and Pablo Picasso, Brice subverts her predecessors by imbuing her women figures an historically uncommon sense of agency and self-possession. Many of the artist’s works feature figures in doorways—indeed, it is the liminality of these threshold spaces where Brice examines the dichotomies of interior/exterior, public/private, and artist/model. Brice’s use of vermillion and cobalt across her oeuvre also functions to obscure the bodies she depicts, further discouraging an easily digestible consumption of the female form.

The artist has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions, including an exhibition of new work at Charleston in East Sussex (UK) in 2021; Lisa Brice: Smoke and Mirrors at KM21, The Hague (NL) in 2020, with an accompanying catalogue; an eponymous exhibition at Stephen Friedman Gallery, London (UK) in 2019; and Art Now: Lisa Brice at Tate Britain, London (UK) in 2018.

Brice is currently included in Life Between Islands: Caribbean-British Art 1950s – Now at Tate Britain, London (UK) through April. Recent group exhibitions include Mixing It Up: Painting Today at Hayward Gallery, London (UK) in 2021; A Collection of Wakefield at the Hepworth Wakefield (UK) in 2020; Monster/Beauty: An Exploration of the Female/Femme Gaze at Lychee One, London (UK) in 2020; and Artists I Steal From, curated by Alvaro Barrington and Julia Peyton-Jones, at Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, London (UK) in 2019.

The artist’s work is included in the collections of the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (CA); the Johannesburg Art Gallery (SA); the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art, Washington, D.C.; the Tate Britain, London (UK); and the X Museum, Beijing (CN), among many others.

CV

Press

09.27.2021
Painting exhibitions at London's Hayward Gallery and Greengrassi confirm medium is as surprising and relevant as ever
Louisa Buck

The Art Newspaper

11.20.2020
Lisa Brice
Unknown

Apollo Magazine

02.01.2020
Lisa Brice
Barry Schwabsky

Artforum

06.06.2018
Lisa Brice liberates art history's female muses with a vibrant and voluptuous show at Tate Britain's Art Now
Louisa Buck

The Telegraph

05.19.2018
Lady in blue: the nudes of Lisa Brice – in pictures
Hannah Valentine

The Guardian

05.01.2018
Q&A: Lisa Brice
Aïcha Mehrez

Tate

09.14.2017
OUT OF THE BLUE WITH LISA BRICE
Nick Compton

Cultured Mag