Rachel Lancaster edits and translates photographic ‘stills’ into oil paintings, from found moving imagery and her own photographs. She depicts detailed fragments divorced from greater narratives, rendering these fragments both descriptive and abstract, suspenseful and open-ended; within this, her strategic use of ambiguity creates resonant pauses, allowing emotional undercurrents to come forth and find resolve. 

In ‘A Gathering’, Lancaster plays with notions of decontextualization and mystery: an object is shrouded in fabric, both its external contexts and internal content unknown. Through these omissions, the work is imbued with a curiously psychological charge and a direct relation to the viewer. Lancaster foregrounds the material immediacy and patterning of the fabric, yet its presence is contingent on absence; simultaneously, the work’s subject demands our attention, yet refuses to reveal what lies within.

A crop of Rachel Lancaster's painting 'Pull The Strings', 2022 Oil on canvas 60 x 50 cm 23 5/8 x 19 3/4 in. A large pink bow in the hair of a female figure. We see two masks facing us. 

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Installation shots of 'Cadence' by Laura Lancaster and Rachel Lancaster at Workplace | London

Rachel Lancaster

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Rachel Lancaster

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London

Newcastle