• Bringing together seven of her early large scale paintings and major later works, this exhibition charts the trajectory of one of Britain’s leading and most iconic contemporary female painters in celebration of her 70th birthday.

     

    These works are a testament to Rhys James’ longstanding commitment to figurative art and the materiality of paint. Alongside more recent works, the paintings exhibited reveal her engagement with the nature of femininity, domesticity, motherhood, and artistry itself. 


    Drawing on the artist’s own fascination with the transience of being, Shani Rhys James at 70 is reflection of her life and career, highlighting her timeless appeal and ability to charge the canvas with emotion.

  • Shani Rhys James was born in Melbourne, Australia in 1953. She was raised by her mother, an artist and actress,... Shani Rhys James was born in Melbourne, Australia in 1953. She was raised by her mother, an artist and actress,...

    Shani Rhys James was born in Melbourne, Australia in 1953. She was raised by her mother, an artist and actress, and stepfather, a theatre director. She moved to London in 1963, with her mother and had to adapt to an environment that was starkly different to the one she left behind. Later in life Rhys James would meet her biological father and undergo a considered re-engagement with her past; with the confrontation of where she came from and who she was, becoming her artistic focus. 

     

    A number of paintings in this exhibition are the result of this exploration. Rhys James conjures scenes from her childhood in Australia, filled with symbolic objects and vividly expressive figures. Other paintings speak to Rhys James' artistic trajectory and creation of a space for her unique and defiant artistic voice.  

     

    The works she has chosen for this exhibition date from her studies at Central Saint Martins in the 1970s, to the great success she enjoys to this day. Throughout her career Rhys James has been awarded numerous prizes including the Gold Medal at the 1992 National Eisteddfod of Wales, BBC Wales Visual Art Award, Jerwood Painting Prize, and an M.B.E. for services to Welsh art in 2006. Her works are held in major national collections such as Arts Council of England, National Museum in Cardiff, National Library of Wales, Birmingham Museum, Pallant House Gallery in Chichester, Victoria Museum in Bath, and Europe’s largest collection of art by women at Murray Edwards College, Cambridge.

  • I DON'T NORMALLY HAZARD PREDICTIONS ABOUT POSTERITY, BUT OF THIS I'M CERTAIN. SHANI RHYS JAMES WILL BE REMEMBERED WHEN MANY OF HER BETTER KNOWN CONTEMPORARIES ARE FORGOTTEN, BECAUSE SHE IS A TRUE ORIGINAL.

    Laura Gascoigne, Art critic: Spectator, Apollo, RA magazine

  • Rhys James has little time for the sexist limitations that have historically inhibited female artists. In Self-Portrait with Red Beret...
    Shani Rhys James, Red Beret, 1991

    Rhys James has little time for the sexist limitations that have historically inhibited female artists. In Self-Portrait with Red Beret she depicts herself in a somewhat androgynous manner as a painter first and foremost.

     

    This self-portrait was the start of a series of works in which she depicted herself as the artist in her studio. Wearing her father’s surgical jacket and latex gloves to protect herself from the toxic lead paint used to create the very painting she depicts herself in, Rhys James compares herself to the surgeon, a master of their craft. 

  • Shani Rhys James' paintings are not for the fainthearted. Her large canvases embody the dark and potent tensions buried in family relationships. Things unsaid, emotional dislocation and fear and anxiety are all expressed in a bravura expression of bold colour and skilful painterly force. She is a painter's painter.

     

    Susan Daniel McElroy, Curator, former Tate St Ive and Scottish Art Council director

     

  • Studio paintings in museum collections
    Shani Rhys James, Self-Portrait with Red Beret, 1991 (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Studio; Self-Portrait, 1992 Newport Museum and Art Gallery (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Red Self Portrait, 1992 National Museum Wales, National Museum Cardiff (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Shani Rhys James, The Ladder, 1993 (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    The Mirror, 1994 Glynn Vivian Art Gallery (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Lead White, 1995 Usher Gallery (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).

    Red Beret, 1991

  • “I’m a painter, first and foremost, I’m a painter. It makes no difference whether I am a male or a...
    Shani Rhys James, The Ladder, 1993

    “I’m a painter, first and foremost, I’m a painter. It makes no difference whether I am a male or a female. What matters is being a painter. And taken seriously”

    Shani Rhys James

    In The Ladder, the artist positions herself as a worker in her own environment – the studio. The ladder, the tool she uses to create her large-scale works, emerges from a layer of rubber gloves and paint-stained cloths which cover the floor.

     

    The relationship between chaos and creativity speaks to the freedom felt in the studio. This is the artist as creator, not mother, wife, or guardian of domestic duties.


    The blue chair, seen here in the top right of the image, is a recurring motif in her work. Purchased from Brick Lane in London before moving to Wales, the chair is symbolic of her time in the capital.

  • Rhys James has described looking at the human head in the same way that Cezanne looked at Mont Sainte-Victoire, approaching the face as a landscape. In this process, she often sections the head into parts using a hand mirror to study each section in detail.


    Her self-portraits reveal a deeply expressive way of working. She emphasises the physicality of the paint, focusing on her brushwork in an almost abstract way. Her aim is to draw the figure out from the layers of paint  - “making the paint become the flesh”, as she puts it. Through this approach, her technique becomes part of the narrative rather than just the means by which facial expressions are captured.

    • Shani Rhys James Head I, 1992 Oil on gesso board 10 3/4 x 9 1/2 in, 27.3 x 24 cm Signed, titled and dated on verso
      Shani Rhys James
      Head I, 1992
      Oil on gesso board
      10 3/4 x 9 1/2 in, 27.3 x 24 cm
      Signed, titled and dated on verso
      Enquire
    • Shani Rhys James Face Mask, 2010 Oil on linen 13 x 9 1/2 in, 33 x 24 cm Signed, titled and dated on verso
      Shani Rhys James
      Face Mask, 2010
      Oil on linen
      13 x 9 1/2 in, 33 x 24 cm
      Signed, titled and dated on verso
      Enquire
    • Shani Rhys James, Narcissus, 2016
      Shani Rhys James, Narcissus, 2016
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    • Shani Rhys James Head against Zigzags, 2021 Oil on gesso board 19 3/4 x 19 3/4 in, 50 x 50 cm Signed, titled and dated on verso
      Shani Rhys James
      Head against Zigzags, 2021
      Oil on gesso board
      19 3/4 x 19 3/4 in, 50 x 50 cm
      Signed, titled and dated on verso
      Enquire

  • Shani, by revealing and concealing an inner world, has made a singular contribution to the tradition of self portraiture

     

    Tessa Jackson OBE, Founder of Artes Mundi, former Arnolfini and Scottish Arts Council director

  • Rhys James returned to Australia for the first time when she was 37 and was inspired to create a number...
    Shani Rhys James, The Inner Room, 1999

    Rhys James returned to Australia for the first time when she was 37 and was inspired to create a number of works based on her childhood memories.

     

    In Inner Room, a young Rhys James stands in a space transformed by one of her stepfather’s set designs. In the claustrophobic space of the windowless room, the bodices and corsets refer both to the physical constraints that fashion demanded of women in centuries past, and her mother’s theatrical rituals of beautification.  

     

    Rhys James has described how the painting shows the beginning of a child’s path to womanhood. Through playing dress-up she encounters society’s expectations and decides which costume to wear in order to conform to its pressures.

     

    The themes of performance and stage are of great importance in Rhys James’ work. She views scenes as tableaux, with the very scale of the paintings promoting a sense of walking onto a set. The transience of the theatre set is also linked to Rhys James’ feelings of displacement.

  • It’s that resigned, clear-eyed  look she  turns on herself in exuberantly painted domestic settings which  threaten to swallow her  up which is so original.  She paints the female condition.

     

    Frances Borzello, PhD, Art historian and scholar | Author: 'Seeing Ourselves: Women's Self-Portraits'

  • In Chicken Coop III, the artist depicts her younger self standing amidst the vast Australian landscape. The little girl faces...
    Shani Rhys James, Chicken Coop III, 1999

    In Chicken Coop III, the artist depicts her younger self standing amidst the vast Australian landscape. The little girl faces the viewer defiantly standing next to a black wired chicken coop which used to be her dolls house and her world of make-believe.


    As in The Inner Room, the innocent child is alone, surrounded by dominant objects. The painting evokes the artist’s sense of impermanence, of “being on a knife’s edge”, as she describes it. In the lower left corner, there is the trace of a snake that has just slithered away. Here, the artist reflects upon her youthful fortitude and ability to adapt to the upheavals and challenges of life.

  • Red Ground takes inspiration from Matisse’s use of colour and flat pictorial plane in his painting Red Studio. The figures...
    Shani Rhys James, Red Ground, 2003

    Red Ground takes inspiration from Matisse’s use of colour and flat pictorial plane in his painting Red Studio. The figures appear to float within space, not belonging to a particular place, and instead preoccupied with their own state of being. The relationship between the characters is ambivalent. It can be interpreted both as a child with her mother, or a little girl viewing her future self.

     

    An admirer of Jana Sterbak, Mona Hatoum and Louise Bourgeois, Rhys James considers the symbolism of objects and their power to evoke memory and drama. The comb of Madame Bovary, the chicken coop, the mannequin, the chair, the ladder all employed with considerable potency. Here, the chair is inspired by Sterbak’s meat chair, which the artist relates to ideas of flesh-to-flesh contact, physical closeness, and her own notion of the paint becoming flesh.

  • “Shani Rhys James has come to us like a breath of fresh air that blows away so many of the stagnant theories that burden the art of our times”

     

    Sir Kyffin Williams, renowned artist

  • Rhys James further addresses her relationship with her mother in Blue Top, recalling the sense of dislocation she felt when...
    Shani Rhys James, Blue Top, 2013

    Rhys James further addresses her relationship with her mother in Blue Top, recalling the sense of dislocation she felt when moving to London aged ten. Both figures stand in isolation enduring separate turmoil: the child coping with her lack of autonomy and dislocation from home; the mother, in her mighty scale, facing single motherhood.

     

    The stark red of the background which fills and highlights the separation between them is broken up by a black chandelier, hanging from the ceiling like an ominous spider. This object speaks to a desire for home comforts, its aspirational character underlined by the unlit bulbs. 

     

    The presence of ambiguous objects is a recurring theme within Rhys James’ oeuvre, using chandeliers and decorative wallpaper to provide subversive messages in the domestic space. They also represent entrapment, with the stereotypical responsibility of the female to provide the perfect home.

  • The phenomenon of the woman who, struggling to have access to the public space, becomes confined to and obsessed with the interior of the home is at the centre of Madame Bovary. Published in 1856, Flaubert details the life of a woman who, bored by her husband, focuses her aspiration on clothes and interiors to the point of financial ruin. As Rhys James puts it, “obsession with appearance can dictate so much of a woman’s path”. Madame Bovary’s impending doom is suggested by her shadow on the wallpaper, its green shade a reference to her suicide by arsenic.

    • Shani Rhys James Blue Top, 2013 Oil on canvas 72 1/8 x 96 1/8 in, 183 x 244 cm Signed, titled and dated on verso
      Shani Rhys James
      Blue Top, 2013
      Oil on canvas
      72 1/8 x 96 1/8 in, 183 x 244 cm
      Signed, titled and dated on verso
      Enquire
    • Shani Rhys James Self-Portrait with Red Beret, 1991 Oil on gesso board Framed: 50 3/4 x 41 in, 129 x 104 cm Unframed: 48 1/4 x 38 3/8 in, 122.5 x 97.5 cm Signed, titled and dated on verso
      Shani Rhys James
      Self-Portrait with Red Beret, 1991
      Oil on gesso board
      Framed: 50 3/4 x 41 in, 129 x 104 cm
      Unframed: 48 1/4 x 38 3/8 in, 122.5 x 97.5 cm
      Signed, titled and dated on verso
      Enquire
    • Shani Rhys James Chicken Coop III, 1999 Oil on linen 72 x 84 1/4 in, 183 x 214 cm Signed, titled and dated on verso
      Shani Rhys James
      Chicken Coop III, 1999
      Oil on linen
      72 x 84 1/4 in, 183 x 214 cm
      Signed, titled and dated on verso
      Enquire
    • Shani Rhys James The Inner Room, 1999 Oil on linen 72 1/4 x 84 1/4 in, 183.5 x 214 cm Signed, titled and dated on verso
      Shani Rhys James
      The Inner Room, 1999
      Oil on linen
      72 1/4 x 84 1/4 in, 183.5 x 214 cm
      Signed, titled and dated on verso
      Enquire
    • Shani Rhys James The Ladder, 1993 Oil on canvas Framed: 99 5/8 x 67 3/8 in, 253 x 171 cm Unframed: 96 1/4 x 63 3/4 in, 244.5 x 162 cm Signed, titled and dated on verso
      Shani Rhys James
      The Ladder, 1993
      Oil on canvas
      Framed: 99 5/8 x 67 3/8 in, 253 x 171 cm
      Unframed: 96 1/4 x 63 3/4 in, 244.5 x 162 cm
      Signed, titled and dated on verso
      Enquire
    • Shani Rhys James, Madame Bovary, 2019
      Shani Rhys James, Madame Bovary, 2019
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    • Shani Rhys James Red Ground, 2003 Oil on linen 84 1/4 x 72 1/4 in, 214 x 183.5 cm Signed, titled and dated on verso
      Shani Rhys James
      Red Ground, 2003
      Oil on linen
      84 1/4 x 72 1/4 in, 214 x 183.5 cm
      Signed, titled and dated on verso
      Enquire

  • Critics and curators on shani:

     

    “Shani at 70! It’s hard to believe. Shani has such strength and vitality in her work, looking back over the years her work now reflects all ages of woman. Always finding new ways to express the intensely personal and infinitely universal.

    Congratulations Shani! Bravo, and many many more. Look forward to seeing Shani at 80 and 90 as she tells her stories in fresh and important ways.”

    Steffan Jones Hughes: curator at Oriel Davies Gallery

     

    “I've lingered over Shani's artworks for many years, fascinated by her intriguing and multi-layered worlds of domestic interiors and self-portraits all fleshed out in provocative colour, which can charm and disturb in equal measure, I simply love her work.”

    PL Henderson: feminist art historian and author

     

    "Woven through her female-centred family dramas are references to literature, fairy tales and personal stories, which intertwine to show the complexities of femininity. Wild wallpapers, beautiful bouquets, climbing shadows and sharp-toothed combs recur in Rhys James’ symbolic canvases, accompanying her watchful heroines who rattle their gilded cages. However, the artist’s most compelling subject is herself; in triumphant self-portraits Shani Rhys James asserts herself as a great and disruptive painter who is changing art history.”

    Ruth Millington: critic and writer | Author of 'Muse'

     

    I FIRST SAW A PAINTING BY SHAN RHYS JAMES IN 1987 [YELLOW GLOVES]. I REMEMBER CLEARLY THE EXCITEMENT I FELT THAT DAY, AND THE INSTANT REALISATION THAT A NEW AND POWERFUL VOICE HAD EMERGED. THROUGHOUT THE SUBSEQUENT DECADES, I HAVE NEVER FAILED TO BE MOVED BY THE WORK OF AN ARTIST WHO HAS PRESENTED TO THE WORLD IMAGES OF UNIQUE INTENSITY, GREAT BEAUTY, AND DEEP HUMANITY.

    Peter Lord, author