Viewing room

Gorgeous @ Rare Basic

Sara Pope

15 Jun 2017 — 18 Jun 2017

Jealous and Rare Basic are delighted to welcome Sara Pope for a solo exhibition. #Gorgeous will feature the artists’ trademark seductive lips through a wide range of media including brand new neon light works, original pieces and new limited edition prints, made at Jealous Print Studio. The collaboration will provide an interactive and unique environment.

Sara’s new body of work to be featured in the exhibition will aim to seduce. Lips and mouths in emotive poses are painted to a polished perfection: a version of reality, more perfect than real. ‘We are surrounded by a visual stream of persuasion, through advertising, Instagram and social media, we experience repeated appeals to our unconscious desires. The more seductive the image, the greater the response. This has led to the rise of image perfectionism, where the boundaries between what’s real and what is created are becoming ever more blurred. Through the perspective of many years’ experience working in fashion and magazines, I explore this theme."

"The starting point is a makeup brush and a lipstick. I paint a models lips, then, using tricks and techniques of makeup and lighting, I begin the process of creating the perfect lips. I ask the model to express different emotions which I capture photographically; using these shots as inspiration I begin the artwork."

Sara Pope

Sara Pope

Contemporary artist Sara Pope is well known for her bold, seductive paintings of voluptuous lips. Taking inspiration from her experience working for several years in the fashion industry as a shoe designer, and in magazines as a designer and art director, Sara aims to capture the glamour and seductive power conveyed by the lips and mouth. Raising questions of beauty, consumerism, and the rise of image perfectionism Sara imitates the slickness of advertising, whilst provocatively subverting its themes.

All her paintings from this series start with a photographic shoot, a model and some make up. Sara is completely in control of each creative aspect, from the makeup, to the lighting and finally taking the photographs. Exploring the ideas of communication, she asks the model, to think of emotions, love, happiness or flirtation, which she captures photographically. Using the photos as a starting point she paints each piece by layering several thin layers of oil paint. A translucent, glass like quality results, achieving a, ‘polished’ version of reality. Sara is also known for her portraits, most notably having a portrait of the Pope accepted into the Vatican collection. Sara works in series’ or ‘collections’, painting a body of work with common stylistic elements and colour palette, as with seasonal collections in fashion.