Cathy Lomax (born 1963) is a

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based

artist An artist is a person engaged in an activity related to creating art, practicing the arts, or demonstrating the work of art. The most common usage (in both everyday speech and academic discourse) refers to a practitioner in the visual arts o ...

curator A curator (from , meaning 'to take care') is a manager or overseer. When working with cultural organizations, a curator is typically a "collections curator" or an "exhibitions curator", and has multifaceted tasks dependent on the particular ins ...

and director of Transition Gallery. She is mainly known for her figurative paintings which often focus on the construction, codification and subversion of femininity and are inspired by 'the seductive imagery of film, fame and fashion'.

Life and career

Cathy Lomax grew up in Guildford, Surrey where she was co-founder of the New Wave grou
Shoot! Dispute
She moved to London in 1983 and worked as a makeup artist with photographers such as

Juergen Teller Juergen Teller (born 28 January 1964) is a German fine-art and fashion photographer. He was awarded the Citibank Prize for Photography in 2003 and received the Special Presentation International Center of Photography Infinity Award in 2018. M ...

Craig McDean Craig McDean (born 1964 in England) is a British fashion photographer, originally from Middlewich, now based in New York City. Life McDean originally trained and worked as a car mechanic before studying photography at Mid Cheshire College (OND ...

and

Corinne Day Corinne Day (19 February 1962 – 27 August 2010) was a British fashion photographer, Documentary photography, documentary photographer and fashion model. Early life Corinne Day grew up in Ickenham with her younger brother and her grandparents ...

for

I-D ''i-D'' is a British biannual magazine dedicated to fashion, music, art, film and youth culture. The magazine was launched in 1980 by Terry Jones, originally as a hand-stapled fanzine it has since evolved into a glossy publication. In 2023 the ...

, The Face and Vogue. She earned a Bachelor of Arts in Fine Art from

London Guildhall University London Guildhall University was a university in the United Kingdom from 1992 to 2002, established when the City of London Polytechnic was awarded university status. On 1 August 2002, it merged with the University of North London to form Londo ...

(2000), and a Master of Arts from

Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design Central Saint Martins is a constituent college of the University of the Arts London, a public art university in London, England. The college offers full-time courses at foundation, undergraduate and postgraduate levels, and a variety of short ...

(2002). In 2016 she began a PhD in Film Studies at

Queen Mary University of London Queen Mary University of London (QMUL, or informally QM, and formerly Queen Mary and Westfield College) is a public university, public research university in Mile End, East London, England. It is a member institution of the federal University ...

. Her research looks at makeup and its role in shaping female Hollywood stars. Lomax is the director o
Transition Gallery
in East London and also publishes and edits two magazines: ''

Arty Arty may refer to: People * Arty (queen), 8th century BC wife of Pharaoh Shebitku * Arty (musician) (born 1989), Russian record producer and DJ born Artem Stolyarov * Arty Ash, stage name of British actor Arthur Richard Dodge (1895–1954) * A ni ...

'', a publication featuring artwork and opinions from a group of invited contributors; and
Garageland
', an art and culture publication which examines art themes such as beauty, machismo or nature. Artist

Stella Vine Stella Vine (born Melissa Jane Robson, 1969) is an English artist, who lives and works in London. Her work is figurative painting, with subjects drawn from personal life, as well as from rock stars, royalty, and other celebrities. In 2001, she ...

has commented on Lomax: :It's been great to have the support of Cathy Lomax at Transition Gallery, she has been one of the few people to really believe in me ... she'd say, “great do it, just do it all, you shouldn't censor yourself so much, stop chucking stuff out !” Nice genuine support without any motive. Cathy paints a bit like Peter Blake. I first came across Cathy's magazine ‘Arty’ a little art fanzine at the Serpentine gallery bookshop ... the energy in her magazine, and the childishness of it, I thought she would be a teenager, she was my age...and she also was running her own gallery ... She's been a rock... In 2014 Lomax received a
Abbey Award
and became an Abbey Painting Fellow at the

British School at Rome The British School at Rome (BSR) is a British interdisciplinary research centre supporting the arts, humanities and architecture established in Rome. Historical and archaeological study are at the core of its activities. History The British Sc ...

. She showed work made during this time at th
June 2014 Mostra
In 2016 Lomax won the inaugural 'Contemporary British Painting Prize' for her painting "Black Venus". The prize included a solo exhibition at

Swindon Museum and Art Gallery Museum & Art Swindon, formerly Swindon Museum and Art Gallery, is a museum and gallery in Swindon, England. It is run by Swindon Borough Council and since 2024 has been housed within the Swindon Civic Offices, council's offices at Euclid Street, ...

, the subsequent show 'The Blind Spot' was reviewed b
Matt Price
in ''The Anomie Review of Contemporary British Painting','' and ''Adors,'' a painting inspired by the Swindon born actress

Diana Dors Diana Dors (born Diana Mary Fluck; 23 October 19314 May 1984) was an English actress and singer. Dors came to public notice as a Bombshell (slang), blonde bombshell, much in the style of Americans Marilyn Monroe, Jayne Mansfield, and Mamie Van ...

was acquired for the gallery's collection. The second part of a prize was a commissioned essay which was written by academic Paul O'Kane and published i
The Journal of Visual Art Practice
Much of Lomax's art is connected to images from film and she has produced cover artwork for three BFI Film Classic books, including ''Picnic at Hanging Rock'' by Anna Backman Rogers and M''ädchen in Uniform'' by Barbara Mennel. In a 2024 article for Filmmaker magazine

Holly Willis Holly Willis is a Professor and Chair of the Media Arts and Practice division in the USC School of Cinematic Arts United States. Previously, she served as Associate Dean of Research and Founding Chair of Media Arts and Practice, as well as Dire ...

wrote: 'In Cathy's drawings and paintings, we see cinema and its voracious gaze at the female rendered through the loving gaze of another female. The result is not a doubling of a kind of looking that takes away, but a revisioning of looking that gives back. This is looking that actually sees, that acknowledges, celebrates and reclaims.' Published writing includes: 'Ghostly threads: Painting Marilyn Monroe's white dresses', ''Film, Fashion & Consumption'', 2015, 'Makeup as Dark Magic: The Love Witch and the Subversive Female Gaze', ''Frames Cinema Journal'' (2019), 'Kirsten Glass: Swimming Witches', Karsten Schubert London catalogue essay (2020), 'Girlfriends' a review of the Criterion Collection Blu-Ray, ''Open Screens Journal'' (2022) Her book 'Making Up the Star: Makeup, Femininity, Race and Ageing' will be published by BFI/Bloomsbury in 2026.

Shows

Exhibitions include: *
Scandal '63 Revisited
' (Leicester Gallery at De Montfort University, April 2023) * ''Fabulation'' (All Saints Church, Cambridge, March 2022) * ''Star Ba''r (Broadway Cinema, Letchworth Garden City, 2020) * ''The Immaculate Dream'' (Collyer Bristol Galley, London, 2019) * ''Beauty Salon'' (Alison Richards Building, University of Cambridge) * ''The Blind Spot'' (

, 2017) * ''American Tan'' (Dolph, London, 2015) * ''The Image Duplicator'' (Contemporary Art Projects, London, 2009) * ''The Golden Record'' (Collective Gallery, Edinburgh, 2008) * ''Vignettes'' (Rosy Wilde, 2006) * ''She's No Angel'' (James Coleman, 2004) * ''Girl on Girl'' (Transition Gallery, 2003)

References

Books

* ''The Anomie Review of Contemporary British Painting,'' Anomie, * * ''Arty: Greatest Hits'', Transition Editions, (an anthology of excerpts from issues 1–16)

External links

Cathy Lomax's websiteTransition GalleryArty MagazineArt UK
{{DEFAULTSORT:Lomax, Cathy 1963 births Living people 20th-century English painters 21st-century English painters Alumni of Central Saint Martins Artists from London English curators English women curators 20th-century English women painters 21st-century English women painters

Life and career

Shows

See also

References

Books

External links