ABOUT
GRACE TOBIN (b. 1993) is a British artist who grew up in New York City. She is currently living and working in London. She attained her BA in Visual Arts from Oberlin College (2016) and MA in Painting from the Royal College of Art (2022). Grace has exhibited both in London and internationally, including shows in New York, Belgium, Milan, and Shanghai.
Tobin's practice explores our relationships to the environments we inhabit, considering how these connections impact our sense of self. Her practice stems from ideas of space holding personal narrative, documenting the physical and psychological impact such environments have in informing our identity. Tobin challenges our sense of space through subtracting material and softening edges, presenting a segmented reality, a blurred memory.
Her work reflects on how physical objects can build and hold emotional value, over time embodying histories and identity. By reconstructing intimate domestic environments from her own history and memory, she considers this human instinct of creating semiotic value, or creating meaning, from our surroundings.
The hazy dreamlike colour palette of Tobin’s paintings, paired with the use of pattern, mirrors the themes of imperfection and repetition in our lives and routines. The saturated tinted hues of her works resemble the distorted lenses through which we recall. Grace Tobin’s work exhibits the speculative, contemplative moments in which we are formed, informed, and reminded by our surroundings over time.