Championed Artist

Overview

Rouy’s practice underlines the parts of ourselves that we find uncomfortable, accentuated by ardent depictions of bodily fluids; such as blood, pus, semen, faeces, milk, urine, sweat and saliva. There is a link between bodily fluids and the notion of being a human and our mortality. 

 

To imitate her hyperawareness of having a body she subverts and delocalizes depictions of female and male genitalia to form androgenous or fluid figures that resonate to the artist’s identity while also removing a fixed identity.

London based artist Elsa Rouy (Sittingbourne, Kent) creates art with a female gaze. Rouy explores new ways of expressing semi-autobiographical and social narratives following a discourse related to the human condition.

 

She has an interest in female sexual expression and the imperfect-self. Her artworks satirize immoral thoughts that are terrifying, centring around feelings of shame and guilt. To explore this, Rouy paints hedonistic grotesque figures often of monstrous women with their sexual organs revealed. To imitate her hyperawareness of having a body she subverts and delocalizes depictions of female and male genitalia to form androgenous or fluid figures that resonate to the artist’s identity while also removing a fixed identity.

 

Rouy’s practice underlines the parts of ourselves that we find uncomfortable, accentuated by ardent depictions of bodily fluids; such as blood, pus, semen, faeces, milk, urine, sweat and saliva. There is a link between bodily fluids and the notion of being a human and our mortality. The leaking of bodily fluids breaks the containment associated with correctness and purity, which are constantly strived for in our society, our bodies and our minds. The bodily fluids are presented to expose the unsavoury parts of being human that are considered taboo.

 

Her artwork explores societal and internal power roles. Rouy appropriates the human body to discuss relationships between people and the self that are saturated with child-like dependency, intrusion and boundaries. Alongside a distortion of interior and exterior bodies, the artworks denote emotional illusion, trust and trepidation between people. The figures often have connections to expulsion and birth that act simultaneously as a harbouring or a needed release of these emotional burdens.

Works
CV

B. Sittingbourne, UK. Based in London UK.

 

Education
2018-2021 Camberwell college of the arts (UAL), BA Painting, London
2016-2018 University for the creative arts, Level 3 extended diploma in art and design: Distinction, Rochester

 

Solo Exhibitions

2022, Upcoming, Guts Gallery London

2021, A Demon in a Sundress, Guts Gallery, Lonon

2020, Plastic Doesn’t Sweat, Guts Gallery, London

2020, Platform, Unit London, London

 

Group Exhibitions

2022, Upcoming, Out of Nowhere, Oriele Steiner and Amelie Peace, Anderson Contemporary, London 

2022, Upcoming, Kupfer Projects, London

 

2022, CACOTOPIA, Annka Kultys, London

2021, Brain Food Charity Auction, The Auction Collective, London

2021, I Have My Eye On You, Everyday Gallery, Antwerp

2021, Reality Check, Guts Gallery, London, UK

2021, Don't Go South, Studio Berkheim, Stuttgart

2021, A New Art World, Guts Gallery, London, UK

2021, Introducing, The Shop at Sadie Coles HQ, London

2021, For The Many Not The Few, Guts Gallery, London

2021, Hopscotch, Safehouse 1, London

2020, Limbo, Everyday Gallery, Antwerp
2020, Begin Again, Guts Gallery, London
2020, When spiders unite they can tie down a lion, Daniel Raphael Gallery, London
2020, Drawn Together, Unit London, London
2020, No time like the present, Public Gallery, London
2020, Guts Gallery Claps back, Guts Gallery, London
2020, Hands in the digital age, Molly Stedgwick.com, London
2020, When Shit Hits The Fan, Guts Gallery, Guts Gallery, London
2020, Don’t Panic, Southwark Park Galleries, London

 

Press

January 2022, Jess Kelham, Spotlight - Feature Provocative, London-based painter Elsa Rouy, The Wick

 

24th August 2021, TJ Sidhu, Elsa Rouy is Challenging the Idea of sex being sexy, The Face magazine

 

15th July 2021, Anna Woodward, Elsa Rouy, The Artists Contemporary Podcast

 

24th March 2021, Charlie Mills, Elsa Rouy, Coeval Magazine

 

16th March 2021, Ashleigh Kane, Edition 003: safe spaces, women*, and art, Eye Spied

 

4th February 2021, TJ Sidhu, Elsa Rouy is the British art scene’s bold new romantic, The Face Magazine

 

7th September 2020, Interview with Elsa Rouy, Saint Maison Gallery

 

19th August 2020, Archive 00, Saint Maison Gallery

 

13th August 2020, Scarlett Baker, Begin Again: the online exhibition challenging austerity and racial oppression, The Love magazine

 

27th March 2020, TJ Sidhu, When shit hits the fan (in the art world), The Face magazine

 

23rd March 2020, Katie Dunn, Guts Gallery present ‘When shit hits the fan’ digital Instagram exhibition opening this Thursday 26th March, FAD magazine

 

 

Press
Guts Exhibitions 
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