Biography
June Nelson was born and raised in industrial South Wales and now lives in Lewes, East Sussex. Following a degree in English from the University of Reading, she worked in academic and educational publishing, alongside which she took art classes, first at Glasgow School of Art, then at the 369 Gallery and studio complex in Edinburgh. When she eventually moved South, she formalised her art making with a degree in Fine Art (Painting) from the University of Brighton. After juggling family and art with a home studio, she is now a member of Phoenix Artspace, Brighton, and supports her practice by working at Towner Eastbourne. She works across various mediums but concentrates on drawing and painting. Her installation ‘Cabinet of Imagined Mirrors’, was shown in the Liverpool Biennial Independents 2006; she has twice been shortlisted for the Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize, and will shortly be showing her recent ‘diver’ paintings at Phoenix Artspace, Brighton, in April 2025
Statement
I mainly paint and draw, but my work has encompassed sculpture, moving image, and installation. I am fuelled by an interest in female agency and our sense of self, using history, mythology, and personal memories to stand witness to often hidden or silenced lives, particularly those of women. Process, time, and the relationship between object and subject link the recurring patterns and images in my work – doubling; elusive surfaces; ambiguity – and I use materials to reflect this Hands, masked faces, mirrors, and threads are common; isolated or overlooked individuals, both past and present, frequently appear.
In recent drawings I have been using smoke (technically known as 'fumage') to explore family memory. After being separated during Lockdown, I was with my father on his deathbed and felt the last breath leave his body; my mother followed a year later. Inspired by memories evoked trawling through family photographs, I used a burning beeswax taper to draw with. This elusive, difficult medium captures for me the fragility and transience of life, and of family and collective memories fading back through time.
Recent paintings include bathers and balancers; divers and queens; often using imagery from Greek mythology. I continue to explore the same themes and motifs – seeing and silencing; suppression and repression. In a union of the personal and the historical, paintings portray women wearing deep-sea diving helmets, ruffs or boxing gloves. Often taking Tudor portraits or medieval ‘Doom” paintings as a starting point, uncanny faces gaze out at or hide from the viewer. As a modern woman looking back along the matriarchal line, not much has changed. To quote Queen Elizabeth I, “I see everything, and much is lacking”.
CV
Born Newport, South Wales. Lives and works in Brighton and Lewes, UK
HIGHER EDUCATION
2001 Fine Art (Painting), BA Hons, University of Brighton
1988 Modern Art & Modernism, Open University
1978 English, BA Hons, University of Reading,
EXHIBITIONS
2024
Paperworks (group show), Newhaven Project Space,
Newhaven Open, BN1 Marine Workshops,Newhaven
Regenerate, Blue Monkey Network group show, Volt, Eastbourne
2023
Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize, UK tour 2023–24
Gallery 207, Lewes, two-person show with Nadine Feinson
2022
Hastings Open, Hastings Museum and Gallery
2021
NU Artists, group exhibition, South St, Lewes
2020
ING Discerning Eye , London (selected by Jo Baring)
2019
‘Technique’, Devonshire Collective, Eastbourne
2018
Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize , UK tour 2018–19
Martyrs Gallery, Summer Salon, Lewes,
2010
East Sussex Open, Towner, Eastbourne
2006
Liverpool Biennial Independents, ‘Near Distance’ –Maze Studio show, Arena Gallery, Liverpool
2004
‘Voyager’, with Brighton’s Maze Studio Group, Abbéville, France, Anglo-French Cultural exchange Sussex & Picardie
‘Voyager II: Lost Highway’, Phoenix Gallery, Brighton, Anglo-French Cultural exchange Sussex & Picardie
‘Present’, group show of alternative printmaking, CBAT, Cardiff
2003
‘Tools for Recognition’ (4 person show) Phoenix Gallery, Brighton
‘Watch this Space’, post-residency show, Phoenix Gallery, Brighton
RESIDENCIES
Create Space Wales, Ceredigion, 2021
AA2A Scheme, Kingston University Fine Art Department, 2010–11
‘Watch this Space’ – inaugural residency at Phoenix Gallery, Brighton, 2003
AWARDS & GRANTS
AccessArt ACE-funded '40 Artist Educators', 2014
Arts Council SE funding for building ‘ Cabinet of Imagined Mirrors, Watch this Space Residency, Phoenix, Brighton, 2003
Arts Council SE funding to MAZE studio group for 'Voyager', a collaboration with artists from Picardy, France, 2004