Onya McCausland

www.onyamccausland.co.uk

Onya McCausland’s work is concerned with how a material, for example a colour can be a conduit that opens up and critically explores potentially immense interconnected underlying histories that lay hidden or have been forgotten or are overlooked. A current body of work explores colours derived from geological and man made processes in landscapes geographically spread across the UK. What is made ‘visible’ through the sensorial, material as well as optical properties of a single colour are the idiosyncrasies of each individual landscape site. The landscape - and its histories - therefore can be ‘perceived' through the individual colour material that belongs only there. The medium of painting is used in its widest sense, and lends itself to a proximity between surface and skin (which also resonates with her work in the landscape) where ‘surface’ can be a site of physical intimacy joining material and human realms.

Recent exhibitions have been supported by Camden Arts Centre, Newlyn Gallery, Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge, the Delfina Foundation, She has been shortlisted for the prestigious Wollaston Award at the Royal Academy, and the John Moores Painting Prize and is currently commissioned by the Forest of Dean Sculpture Trust. She has exhibited her work nationally and internationally and has work in several private and public collections. She has received funding from The Arts Council, British Council. The Arts and Humanities Research Council are currently funding her PhD. 

Exhibited at Griffin Gallery in Perfectionism (Part III.) The Alchemy of Making in October-November 2016; in Pool in April-June 2016.

 

BORN

1971, UK

EDUCATION

AHRC funded Mphil/PhD - Slade School of Fine Art, University College London, Turning Landscape into Colour, 2013 – 2016

Research Associate - Slade School of Fine Art, UCL Turning Landscape into Colour – project funded by a Provost’s Research Grant, UCL, 2012 – 2013

MFA (Dist.) - Slade School of Fine Art, UCL, London, 1997-1999

BA (hons) 1st Class Painting - Falmouth School of Art, Cornwall, 1994

Foundation Diploma - Hastings School of Arts and Tech, 1994

(Last updated 08.07.2016)

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