Artists

Emma Cousin

Press release

In her new solo show blood, fish and bone Emma Cousin develops a painterly language that moves between body, landscape and system. The works unfold through a dense network of references; mapping, memory, weather, geology and anatomy, that are folded together into images that resist stable orientation. Space is not fixed but continually collapsing and reforming, as interior and exterior states become difficult to separate. Cousin's practice has long been rooted in language as a generative device. Wordplay, idiom and metaphor act as starting points, producing visual structures that stretch, invert and reconfigure meaning. In these recent paintings, bodies dissolve into tanks, weather systems and subterranean environments; the figure is no longer singular or contained, but distributed across the surface. Drawing remains central to this process. Working with charcoal alongside paint, Cousin uses mark-making as a way of thinking, an exploratory, physical activity that allows forms to emerge, break down and reassemble. Lines are smudged, erased and redrawn; negative space oscillates between void and structure. Colour operates as both sensation and signal, moving between the physiological and the symbolic. Hues suggest internal states such as heat, pressure and digestion, as well as external conditions such as weather or terrain. The resulting works function as sites of simultaneous experience, where memory, observation and invention coexist.