Elena Rivera-Montanes

In her practice, Elena Rivera-Montanes depicts interior and domestic spaces that are familiar to her, primarily exploring themes of time and loss. Working exclusively from photographs she has taken herself, or found in her family album, she stitches together memories, overlooked moments and personal histories to tell stories that ignite moments of connection. The viewer often perceives her paintings in relation to themselves and their own lives, with experiences once-lost suddenly floating back to the surface.

Although many of her paintings are devoid of figures, her work becomes a conduit for sharing the characters of the friends and family who once inhabited the spaces depicted. An individual is evoked not through likeness, but by their belongings with a focus on articles that hold intrinsic, if unapparent, sentimental value. Elena’s work uniquely ignites a feeling of nostalgia, with the colour palette inviting visions of long-forgotten photographs and evoking an ineffable, timeless quality. Her compositions meanwhile, draw on the theatrical, repurposing the notion of scenery and props to create painterly stages devoid of actors.

On viewing her works, one is left with a feeling of familiarity and relatability; floating between past and present, and looking to specific scenes with a distant ambivalence, Elena toys with what is remembered and that which has unfortunately been forgotten. Through the process of immortalising quotidian and overlooked familial moments, Elena mirrors the process of recalling memory, blurring and rewriting what we can recollect while opening up an intimate space of exchange and association.