Brighton Highlife

About

This autumn, the Fairhurst gallery is pleased to welcome back London based figurative painter Oliver Bedeman. Since the successful reception of his 2016 solo exhibition Nature Boy with us, we are incredibly excited to be working with Oliver once again, bringing you a showcase of his most recent collection of work with the show titled Brighton Highlife.

Brighton Highlife offers an in depth insight into Bedeman’s recent exploration and portrayal of the themes and ideas underpinning his creative practice, alongside showcasing his painterly style and processes such as the Hinterglasmalerei technique; painting with oil applied to the reverse of glass. 

Inviting a dreamy atmosphere to the gallery, the exhibition of portraits exists on the cusp between real, familiar representation and imagined fantasy, as Oliver intertwines observation of the people and places surrounding him with the imagination and interpretation of song lyrics and fictional characters. With Brighton Highlife, Oliver transforms hints of the ever day into a dreamlike fairytale through his use of colourful yet gentle tones and integration of shapes and patterns, blending backdrops into his figurative portraits. In creating depictions of figures seeming to exist beyond specific times and spaces, the artist maintains an ambiguity and thus invites the viewer to delve deeper into his paintings, joining the characters on their mysterious journeys.