Sitting Still by Rachel Lancaster acquired by MIMA, UK

We are delighted to announce that Rachel Lancaster’s painting Sitting Still, 2025 has been acquired by Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art (MIMA).

The work will join the permanent collection alongside artists such as Tracey Emin, Sonia Boyce, Veronica Ryan, Eileen Cooper, Victor Pasmore and Francis Alÿs. MIMA will host the Turner Prize in 2026.

Rachel Lancaster's practice is focused on painting and its intersections with the languages of cinema, music and photography. Photographic ‘stills’ from found moving imagery, alongside an archive of her own photographs are selected from, edited and then translated into oil paintings. Lancaster's paintings represent detailed fragments of a greater narrative. She is drawn to seemingly insignificant passing shots, extreme close ups of inanimate objects, common place domestic interiors; the split second moments that are “in-between” the action. Divorced physically from their position within a narrative structure, these paintings become abstract, ambiguous and open ended as to the unknown events which have preceded or may follow.