Martha

MARTHA ZMPOUNOU

Martha Zmpounou is a visual artist based in London. In her work she blends different techniques and media, working mainly with watercolour, ink, acrylic and collage. Using portraiture and the human figure as a territory for exploration, her works appear fluid, fragmented, half complete even grotesque, balancing between beauty and repulsion. Drawing from the fashion and pop culture, covering, masking and layering are deployed to create figures and faces whose identities emerge out of a play of hiding and revealing. It is an instinctive process of working where destruction is seen as a means to create. It often involves reworking and painting over previous drawings, cutting and reassembling sketches, fragments of paintings and found imagery. These are combined, modified and rearranged creating figures, assemblages with their parts disparate and at once connected. Zmpounou holds a degree in Fine Arts and an MA in Painting from Aristotle University of Fine arts and an MA in Illustration from Central Saint Martin’s College of Art. She has been awarded several awards including the De Laszlo Foundation Award from the Royal Society of Portrait Painters, the Secret Art Prize, and she was shortlisted for the Jerwood Drawing Prize and the Ashurst Emerging artist Prize. Her work has been exhibited and published widely in the UK and abroad and is part of collections in London, Stockholm, Berlin and Greece.

Some of her group exhibitions in the UK include the National Open Art Competition, Jerwood Drawing Price, the Royal society of Portrait Painters, the Royal Institute of Watercolor Painters, The Sunday Times Watercolor Exhibition, the Royal Society of British artists, The Threadneedle Prize, the Discerning Eye, Modern Panic III, Xhibit and AOI’s best of British Illustration Images 35. Her work was selected to be published several times at Aesthetica’s annuals, Creative Works, ArtMaze Magazine and Create Magazine. Her professional portfolio also includes collaborations with several clients including Nike and UAL.

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