Photo at The Pipe studios by Jack Witek
Thaïs Lenkiewicz (1988) is an artist based in Plymouth, Devon. She has an interest in how we understand and connect with natural and artificial worlds, through painting, making, gathering, and collecting. Thaïs has exhibited nationally and internationally including The Beep Painting Prize in Wales; Asia Culture Centre Gwangju Korea; The Turner Contemporary in Margate, and The Polish Institute, Budapest. She established The Pipe as a studio and project space in 2010.
My work considers modern domestic life through our relationship with the natural world, the internet, and each other.
I am inspired by the aesthetics of Western domestic life, found internet images, screenshots, and stock photos; out of context and explanation. Collating such images together can create otherworldly places, with a sense of the uncanny valley. Places where light and shadow have lost their relationship to the sun or a single light source, and where a ‘wrong’ version of reality can take place, like a dream, through manipulations like reflection, copy-pasting, hyper-orderliness, or changes in contrast, brilliance, and colour.
Through these processes the resulting paintings may exist as windows into an alternate reality, inspired by contemporary and prehistoric life, filtered through or fed by the internet. The world reflected in flatness and strangeness.
CV
Exhibitions
2024
Studio Paradiso, Royal William Yard, Plymouth UK
https://molmor.xyz/studio-paradiso
Studio Paradiso features artists from across studio spaces in Plymouth. Brought together under one roof, the exhibition dissolves the walls between studios and opens up new dialogues between the artists and their work. Showcasing a small snapshot of artists found in the city, Studio Paradiso is a celebration of the dynamism and calibre of creativity in Plymouth.
Poster and organisation by Molly Erin McCarthy: @_molmor
Down to Earth, Garrison Gallery, Maker Heights UK
“Down to Earth brings together new and selected paintings that circle around the themes of nature connectedness, the human gaze, spirituality, belief and imagination. Recent influences include permaculture, weird books about mushrooms, and childhood memories of watching starling murmurations outside Plymouth city centre’s Tesco Express.
Playing alongside and soundtracking the space is a video called 24/7 LIVE Cat TV😺 Unlimited Birds and Silly Squirrels All Day Long (4K)”
Photo credit: Dom Moore
Print Screen, The Wrong Biennale, Online
We Could Be Witches, Fish Factory, Penryn UK
2023
Prehistoric Argos Catalogue Relics from Venus Found at the Bottom of the Radioactive River Tamar, Minerva, Plymouth UK
Thaïs Lenkiewicz is an artist based in Plymouth. She has an interest in how we understand and connect with natural and artificial worlds, through painting, making, gathering, and collecting. Her work considers our domesticated vs wild identities through our relationship with the natural world, the internet, and each other.
This show brings together a collection of paintings which utilise ai generated imagery alongside the found images most often used previously as reference material in her works. Text to image generation enables the crafting of more specific references, and is also an aid to inspire collaborations between themes within this current body of work.
This show brings together a collection of paintings made over the past year which meditate on themes such as: folklore, storytelling and religion, soil health and related issues of land care/land use, Argos catalogue nostalgia, the origin story of the river Tamar and its mild radioactivity, and the history of scientific and religious beliefs surrounding the planet Venus.
Some of these themes relate to each other through semi-unconscious webs that weave anxieties around climate breakdown, capitalism, and something about the outsiderhood of autistic experience.
The use of text to image generation becomes a useful catalyst to combine and mutate such themes into something that wants to forge its own narrative, and move through a falsified folklore that mutates the present with our deep past; the spoils of capitalism with a disembodied yearning for some undefined alternative.
Through these processes the resulting paintings exist as windows into an alternate reality, inspired by contemporary and prehistoric life, filtered through and fed by the internet. The world reflected in flatness and strangeness.
Print Screen, The Wrong Biennale, Online
Under/Over, Krowji, Redruth UK
Print Screen in Invited: Take Care of the Square Footage, Icebox Project Space, Philadelphia, USA
“You May Find Yourself…”, Just Stop Oil Virtual show and auction, Auction Collective
AIR Open 2023 VR show, AIR Gallery, Online
Studio KIND. Summer Open 2023, Studio Kind, Braunton UK
2022
All in Bad Taste, AIR Gallery, Manchester UK
HOW LONG, Vacancy Atlas, Plymouth UK
Silo Ono, Fresh Salad, Online
Without Borders, Meta Forte, Venice Italy
One Minute!, Maketank, Exeter UK
AWIEA Group Show, Cardiff Umbrella & The Klatch Collective, Cardiff UK
Human, Tebbs Contemporary Art Gallery, Online
Viragom Viragom, Fish Factory, Falmouth UK
2021
Life On Venus, The Tub Hackney, London, UK
https://theauctioncollective.com/auctions/life-on-venus-the-landscape/
Without Borders, Elysium, Swansea, Wales > Japan > Italy > USA > Canada > Norway
2020
2020 Beep Painting Biennial, Elysium Gallery, Swansea UK
Groocksgallery with Sadgrads2020
Plug, Online Exhibition curated by Klatch Collective
HEAT & RELIEF, Vacant Gallery
2016
Here, There, and Everywhere: Eurasian Cities, Asia Culture Center, Gwangju, Korea, Republic Of.
Made In Country, Karinthy Szalon, Budapest, Hungary
2015
Brody Anonymous Project, Art Market Budapest, Budapest, Hungary.
Cat Cot Dot Dog, AQB Residents Annual Exhibition, Art Quarter Budapest, Budapest, Hungary.
Awards
2023 CAMP Mentoring Grant working with artist/perfumer Ezra Lloyd Jackson
2022 Time Space Money bursary, a-n The Artists Information Company and Arts Council England.
Publications
The Pandemic Post – The Food Issue – 2021
https://archestrat.us/products/the-pandemic-post-the-food-issue
front page, back page, centre fold – 2022
https://www.flocksouthwest.org/product-page/frontpage-backpage-centrefold-pre-order
Let’s Stab Caesar – 2023
Residencies
Artist Residency in Motherhood, 2022-ongoing
AQB Artist-in-Residence Program, Art Quarter Budapest, Budapest, Hungary
Alumni Summer Studio, Arts University Plymouth, Plymouth UK 2014
Workshops
Scent of Tulgey Woods, Tulgey Woods, Plymouth, UK
Scent of Teats Hill, Coxside, Plymouth, UK
Local scents workshop, Village Hub, Plymouth, UK
Education
2024 – Permaculture Design Course, Plymouth
2020 – Feral MBA Succession, Virtual Programme
2007 – 2010 – Arts University Plymouth, Plymouth, UK BA (hons) in Fine Art Practices
Thaïs Lenkiewicz 