Grace Tobin

Overview
Grace Tobin

“My work reflects on how physical objects can build and hold emotional value, over time embodying histories and identity. By reconstructing intimate domestic environments from my own history and memory, I consider this human instinct of creating semiotic value, or creating meaning, from our surroundings.” – Grace Tobin

Have grown up between two countries, Grace Tobin is acutely aware of the power of certain spaces to hold intense feelings of community and kinship. In her practice, she excavates personal narratives from her own history and memory while exploring the physical and psychological impact of domestic environments upon the formation of individual identity. As she reconstructs intimate domestic environments from her own history and memory, she considers the human instinct to attribute semiotic value to their surroundings.

 

In each rendering, Grace subtracts certain elements, softens edges and deploys a hazy dreamlike colour palette to incarnate a vision of remembering. Her distinct use of pattern, meanwhile, offers her scenes a splash of realism and immediacy while alluding to the repetition and rhythm of the daily routines that once took place within the household depicted.

 

Her works rarely featuring figures, instead allowing physical objects to become symbolic signifiers of the individuals who have shaped her life. Her paintings suggest an inhabitant through their noteworthy absence. In focussing on the spaces and objects left behind, she leaves the viewer with the suggestion of a ghostly presence lurking just outside of the frame. In this way, her paintings pose more questions than they answer, providing glimpses into the lives of the individuals missing from the picture, and leaving the viewer deciphering personal family stories from hints scattered among quotidian objects.

View artist website
Biography
Grace Tobin
Grace Tobin (b.1993) is a British artist who grew up in New York City and is currently living in London. She attained her BA (Hons) in Visual Arts from Oberlin College in 2016, after which she worked in graphic design for four years. Grace is a recent graduate of the Royal College of Art, where she completed her MA in Painting in 2022. She was shortlisted for the 2022 Royal Society of British Artist’s Rome Scholarship.
 
Recent selected group exhibitions include All the Lives We Ever Lived (Canopy Collections, London, 2022), Select Works (Rhodes Contemporary Art, London, 2022), Room Share 3 (Blink, London, 2022), Summer Lounge (Court Tree Collective, New York, 2022), As It Turns Out (Plain Gallery, Milan, 2022), RBA Rising Stars (Royal Society of British Artists, London, 2022), What’s Your Dream (Zberro Gallery, Paris, 2022), Transitions (The Holy Art, London, 2021), Small Pleasures (All Mouth Gallery, London, 2021), Contemporary Narrative (London Paint Club, London, 2021), Eye of the Beholder (Bushwick Open Studios, New York, 2019), The Nature of Chaos (Oberlin College, Ohio, 2016), Going Places (Baron Gallery, Ohio, 2016) and Halftime Showcase (Fisher Gallery, Ohio, 2015). She has also exhibited at the Westbund Art Fair, Shanghai, China in 2022.
Exhibitions
Works