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Cathy Lomax

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Cathy Lomax
Born1963 (age 60–61)
Croydon, London, England
NationalityBritish
Alma materCentral Saint Martins
Known forPainting
StyleFigurative art

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Fetish Girl by Cathy Lomax 2003 (based on Thora Birch as Enid in the United Artists film Ghost World)

Cathy Lomax (born 1963) is a London artist, curator and director of the Transition Gallery. She is mainly known for her figurative paintings which often focus on the female image and are inspired by 'the seductive imagery of film, fame and fashion'.[1]

Life and career

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Cathy Lomax grew up in Guildford, Surrey where she was co-founder of the New Wave group Shoot! Dispute. She moved to London in 1983 and worked as a makeup artist with photographers such as Juergen Teller, Craig McDean and Corinne Day for I-D,[2] The Face and Vogue. She earned a Bachelor of Arts in Fine Art from London Guildhall University (2000), and a Master of Arts from Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design (2002). In 2016 she began a PhD in Film Studies at Queen Mary University of London.[3] Her research looks at makeup and its role in shaping female Hollywood stars 1950–1970.

Lomax is the director of Transition Gallery in East London and also publishes and edits two magazines: Arty, a publication featuring artwork and opinions from a group of invited contributors; and Garageland, an art and culture publication which examines art themes such as beauty, machismo or nature.

Artist Stella Vine has commented on Lomax:

It's been great to have the support of Cathy Lomax at Transition Gallery, she has been one of the few people to really believe in me ... she'd say, “great do it, just do it all, you shouldn't censor yourself so much, stop chucking stuff out !” Nice genuine support without any motive. Cathy paints a bit like Peter Blake. I first came across Cathy's magazine ‘Arty’ a little art fanzine at the Serpentine gallery bookshop ... the energy in her magazine, and the childishness of it, I thought she would be a teenager, she was my age...and she also was running her own gallery ... She's been a rock...[4]

In 2014 Lomax received an Abbey Award and became an Abbey Painting Fellow at the British School at Rome, spending three months in the city. She showed work made during this time at the June 2014 Mostra. In 2016 Lomax won the inaugural 'Contemporary British Painting Prize' for her painting "Black Venus".[5] The prize included a solo exhibition at Swindon Museum and Art Gallery, the subsequent show 'The Blind Spot' was reviewed by Matt Price in The Anomie Review of Contemporary British Painting[6], and Adors, a painting inspired by the Swindon born actress Diana Dors was acquired for the gallery's collection. The second part of a prize was a commissioned essay which was written by academic Paul O'Kane and published in The Journal of Visual Art Practice[7]

Much of Lomax's art is connected to images from film and she has produced cover artwork for three BFI Film Classic books, including Picnic at Hanging Rock by Anna Backman Rogers[8] and Mädchen in Uniform by Barbara Mennel.[9] In a 2024 article for Filmmaker magazine Holly Willis wrote:

'In Cathy's drawings and paintings, we see cinema and its voracious gaze at the female rendered through the loving gaze of another female. The result is not a doubling of a kind of looking that takes away, but a revisioning of looking that gives back. This is looking that actually sees, that acknowledges, celebrates and reclaims.' [10]

Published writing includes: 'Ghostly threads: Painting Marilyn Monroe's white dresses', Film, Fashion & Consumption, 2015,[11] 'Makeup as Dark Magic: The Love Witch and the Subversive Female Gaze', Frames Cinema Journal (2019),[12] 'Kirsten Glass: Swimming Witches', Karsten Schubert London catalogue essay (2020),[2] 'Girlfriends' a review of the Criterion Collection Blu-Ray, Open Screens Journal (2022)[13] Her book 'Making Up the Star: Makeup, Femininity, Race and Ageing' will be published by BFI/Bloomsbury in 2026.

Shows

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Exhibitions include:

Scandal '63 Revisited (Leicester Gallery at De Montfort University, April 2023)

Fabulation (All Saints Church, Cambridge, March 2022)[14]

The Immaculate Dream (Collyer Bristol Galley, London, 2019)[15]
The Blind Spot (Swindon Museum and Art Gallery, 2017)[16]

American Tan (Dolph, London, 2015)[17]
The Image Duplicator (Contemporary Art Projects, London, 2009)
The Golden Record (Collective Gallery, Edinburgh, 2008)
Vignettes (Rosy Wilde, 2006)
She's No Angel (James Coleman, 2004)
Girl on Girl (Transition Gallery, 2003)

See also

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References

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  1. ^ Stenfors, Maria (11 July 2017). "Interview With Cathy Lomax". The Century Club.
  2. ^ "Edward Enninful's greatest i-D covers of the 90s". i-D. 25 November 2014. Retrieved 15 April 2023.
  3. ^ "People - School of Languages, Linguistics and Film".
  4. ^ "Stella Vine: Texts". artmap. Retrieved 16 April 2023.
  5. ^ "Contemporary British Painting Prize 2016". Artist Newsletter. 2016. Retrieved 10 May 2017.
  6. ^ Price, Matt (2018). The Anomie Review of Contemporary Painting. London: Anomie. ISBN 978-1-910221-16-7.
  7. ^ O'Kane, Paul (2019). "Painting the scene of the self: the art of Cathy Lomax". Journal of Visual Art Practice. 18 (1): 19–36. doi:10.1080/14702029.2018.1479939. S2CID 204732415.
  8. ^ Backman Rogers, Anna (2022). Picnic at Hanging Rock. London: BFI / Bloomsbury. ISBN 9781839023354.
  9. ^ Mennel, Barbara (2024). Mädchen in uniform. BFI film classics. London: British Film Institute. ISBN 978-1-83902-417-7.
  10. ^ Willis, Holly (27 June 2024). "Loving Cinema, Frame by Frame: The Art of Cathy Lomax - Filmmaker Magazine". Filmmaker Magazine | Publication with a focus on independent film, offering articles, links, and resources. Retrieved 29 October 2024.
  11. ^ Lomax, Cathy (2015). "Ghostly threads: Painting Marilyn Monroe's white dresses". Film, Fashion & Consumption. 4 (2–3): 177–195. doi:10.1386/ffc.4.2-3.177_1.
  12. ^ Lomax, Cathy (Winter 2019). "Makeup as Dark Magic: The Love Witch and the Subversive Female Gaze". Frames Cinema Journal (16).
  13. ^ Lomax, Cathy (2022). "Blu-Ray Review: Girlfriends [Criterion Collection, 2020] (Claudia Weill, 1978)". Open Screens. 5 (1).
  14. ^ "Past Events". All Saints' Cambridge, The Painted Church. 16 April 2023. Retrieved 16 April 2023.
  15. ^ Minton, David (24 July 2019). "The Immaculate Dream". a-n. Retrieved 16 April 2023.
  16. ^ "The Blind Spot". Contemporary British Painting. 16 April 2023. Retrieved 16 April 2023.
  17. ^ Michon, Alex (9 October 2015). "American Tan". a-n. Retrieved 15 April 2023.

Books

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  • The Anomie Review of Contemporary British Painting, Anomie, ISBN 978-1-910221-16-7
  • Grant, Catherine (2019). Fandom as Methodology: A Sourcebook for Artists and Writers. MIT Press. ISBN 9781912685134.
  • Arty: Greatest Hits, Transition Editions, ISBN 0-9548954-1-X (an anthology of excerpts from issues 1–16)
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