Bio

Sophie Mayer (b. 1980) paints with the bones of the land. Born in Bristol, raised in Johannesburg and based between Berlin and Devon. Her practice pursues an incisive exploration into systems and relationships that comprise histories of power, extraction and exploitation. Her practice seeks to highlight resilience and defiance against the toxic mineral coal legacies; combining both the personal and the political: opening the field to discuss presence and absence, visibility and invisibility. Each layer is a residue of memory, extraction, and time—a record of what has been buried and what refuses to stay hidden. What lost knowledge could these paintings resurrect through pigment and form?