Acts of endurance, labour and absorption in process, Ruth Chambers’ drawings are invested with a nostalgia for the materiality of written communication against the backdrop of our fast-paced digital culture.
Chambers is inspired by the history of surface pattern; its form and function, whether decorative, protective or devotional. Twentieth century Modernism and its concerns also loom large: the grid, colour theory, minimalism, and the art object as self-reflexive rather than mimetic. Made onto envelopes – familiar everyday objects, pregnant with history and function – the drawings become vessels for imagination and personal narrative. Chambers aspires to a slow, introspective mode of making and looking, a means to explore and transcend the drawn surface.
Chambers studied at Durham University (BA in Combined Honours, specialising in History of Art, 2003-06), and at University of Oxford (Masters in History of Art, 2006-07). Recent exhibitions include Wells Art Contemporary (2019) where she won the Parker Harris Mentoring Prize; ING Discerning Eye (2018); and RCA Secret (2015, 2016, 2017, 2018). She has been shortlisted for the Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize (formerly the Jerwood Drawing Prize) in 2011 and 2018; she was the winner of the Dark Yellow Dot Drawing Prize in 2019. An interview with her was published in Interalia Magazine, 2019.