Overview
'My paintings are meticulously rendered through soft films of oil on linen to look as though they are drawn, dyed or printed. My interest is in painting's in/extrinsic conventions and the technical problems of the medium. Central to my invented vocabulary are: the frame, flatness, surface, transparency, trompe l'oeil illusion, bands and units of isolated colour, repetition (with variation and displacement), frontality and the singularly-framed and fixed view, and the re-presentation of art and context.

The paintings are effectively diagrams or templates; illusion is codified through shaded bands and colour is in-laid as if through a process of marquetry. Colour is a veil (not a skin). The literal transparency of colour borrows from the white primer beneath so that colour glows as if lit from behind. This backlit quality is reminiscent of the screen and photograph. The analogue apes the digital; whilst the space of painting is imagined as a two-dimensional stage space that curtails fictive distance as it represents it.' 
- Selma Parlour
Works
  • Selma Parlour, Salon II, 2022
    Salon II, 2022
  • Selma Parlour, Salon IX, 2022
    Salon IX, 2022
  • Selma Parlour, Salon VI, 2022
    Salon VI, 2022
  • Selma Parlour, Sepia II, 2020
    Sepia II, 2020
  • Selma Parlour, Sepia III, 2020
    Sepia III, 2020
  • Selma Parlour, Sepia V, 2020
    Sepia V, 2020
  • Selma Parlour, Salon IV, 2022
    Salon IV, 2022
  • Selma Parlour, Eftsoons IV, 2021
    Eftsoons IV, 2021
  • Selma Parlour, Eftsoons IX, 2021
    Eftsoons IX, 2021
  • Selma Parlour, Eftsoons V, 2021
    Eftsoons V, 2021
  • Selma Parlour, Eftsoons VII, 2021
    Eftsoons VII, 2021
  • Selma Parlour, Eftsoons VIII, 2021
    Eftsoons VIII, 2021
  • Selma Parlour, Eftsoons XI, 2021
    Eftsoons XI, 2021
  • Selma Parlour, Affirming Difference, 2020
    Affirming Difference, 2020
  • Selma Parlour, Double negative I, 2020
    Double negative I, 2020
  • Selma Parlour, Double negative II , 2020
    Double negative II , 2020
  • Selma Parlour, Code Margin Frame Complete, 2019
    Code Margin Frame Complete, 2019
  • Selma Parlour, Four ways from Sunday I, 2019
    Four ways from Sunday I, 2019
  • Selma Parlour, Four ways from Sunday II, 2019
    Four ways from Sunday II, 2019
  • Selma Parlour, Cloud II, 2017
    Cloud II, 2017
  • Selma Parlour, Cloud III, 2017
    Cloud III, 2017
  • Selma Parlour, Detail Shot Memory 1, 2017
    Detail Shot Memory 1, 2017
  • Selma Parlour, Invented vocabulary IV, 2017
    Invented vocabulary IV, 2017
  • Selma Parlour, Upright animal II, 2017
    Upright animal II, 2017
  • Selma Parlour, A place for placeholders, 2016
    A place for placeholders, 2016
  • Selma Parlour, Eleventh hour, 2016
    Eleventh hour, 2016
Exhibitions
Biography
Selma Parlour, b.1976, London, lives and works in London, UK 
 
Major exhibitions include; Feeling of Light (group), Almine Rech Gallery, Brussles (2023); Climbing the Underside of the Ladder (group), cur. by EC, Jenny Hager, David Leapman, Christine Stark, Durden and Dray Gallery, Los Angeles, USA (2022); Warp & Weft (solo), Dio Horia Acropolis, Athens, Greece (2022); Yonder Cloud (solo), Pi Artworks, London, UK (2022); Ode to Orlando, Marcelle Joseph Projects, Pi Artworks, London, UK (2022); Superfice, Coleman Projects, London, UK (2021); The Long Echo, Terrace Gallery, London, UK (2021); Selma Parlour (solo), Pi Artworks Istanbul, Turkey (2020); By Way of Laughter and Trembling, Durden & Ray, Los Angeles, USA (2020); Notions of Female Leadership, Dio Horia, Athens, Greece (2020); Activities for the Abyss (solo), Pi Artworks London, UK (2019); Women Imprinted, The h Club Gallery, London, UK (2019); Upright Animal (solo), cur. Sacha Craddock, Pi Artworks, London, UK (2018); Parlour Games (solo), Marcelle Joseph Projects (solo), House of St Barnabas, London (2016); Paradoxes of the Flattened-Out Cavity (solo), Dio Horia, Mykonos (2015); Selma Parlour (solo), MOT International Projects, London, UK (2012); Selma Parlour and Yelena Popova, Horton Gallery, NY, USA (2012); and Bloomberg New Contemporaries, ICA, London, UK (2011). In 2014, Parlour was selected for Thames and Hudson's international competition and publication 100 Painters of Tomorrow. Parlour was granted Arts Council England Creative Development Award (2020) and the Mark Rothko Memorial Trust Award (2018). She was the recipient of the Sunny Dupree Family Award for a Woman Artist at the Summer Exhibition, Royal Academy of Arts, London (2017) and was a Prizewinner at the John Moores Painting Prize, Walker Gallery, Liverpool (2016). Major collections include; Creative Cities Collections, Beijing and the Saatchi Gallery, London.
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