LONDON.- The subject of Josephine King's upcoming exhibition at Riflemaker is the artist’s relationships with men. King (b. 1965, London) makes ink paintings on paper; self-portraits which document her battle with life. Her acclaimed debut exhibition ‘Life So Far’, explored the trauma of the artist’s extreme bi-polar mania. The series later led to a nomination in the category for Best Visual Artist at the South Bank Show Awards.

In this new exhibition, Riflemaker will present thirty of King’s new ink paintings made during the past two years. The sensuous full-length portraits and the sardonic, disarmingly honest texts which frame them, document personal relationships, her devotion to her work and the isolation of her illness. “In painting Modern Woman, I am looking outside of myself rather than just looking within. Showing myself naked in both mind and body depicts how it feels for me to be going against the grain of society. As a woman painter, I have nothing to lose”, Josephine King. The poster-like composition of King’s paintings point to an innate faculty for an interest in design, perhaps influenced by the work and also the collections of her father, the designer, photographer and curator David King. The painting style takes from the design world, haute couture, Fauvism, early 20c Russian painting, Victoriana and Art Nouveau.

King grew up in the bohemia of late 1960s north London and has spent prolonged periods in Amsterdam, Berlin, China, India, Moscow and in Portugal, where she modelled for Paula Rego. She appears as the stepmother in Rego’s seminal 1995 work ‘Snow White and her Stepmother’.

“They seem to me to be totally truthful pictures. From the heart. Many people will identify with these images” Paula Rego.