Install Shot from 2024 Exhibit at Slade
Chloe Beddow
Featured in Surface Tension, 2025
Chloe Beddow, introduced to us by guest curator Joy Maxwell-Davis, centers her practice on exploration, process and transformation. Beginning with photographs that capture moments of everyday life, she skillfully combines painting with digital tools, diverse materials, and transfer techniques to reimagine these images, layering them with both construction and memory. Her fascination with how objects wear down over time and how human presence becomes embedded in material, speaks directly to the exhibition’s exploration of the surfaces. Through her approach, Chloe’s work transports us beyond the original space, shifting photographs from fixed records into dynamic sites of emotional and physical presence.
By opening the show with Gridded, Chloe sets the tone for the exhibition. The window is used as a central motif, with the work embodying a natural tension—both a portal and a barrier, an opening and a closure, inviting yet withholding. Encased within a wooden lightbox, the work overlaps image and object which reflects Chloe’s ongoing exploration of absence, and presence. This entry point frames the show with a quiet tension that challenges how we perceive and inhabit the surfaces and spaces around us.
Artist Bio
Chloe Beddow is a London based multi-media painter who has just completed her Masters in Fine Art at the Slade School of Fine Art. Prior to Chloe’s postgraduate studies she obtained a degree in Fine Art, Painting and Printmaking from Glasgow School of Art. Chloe has received several prizes including the Desiree Painting Prize (Slade School of Fine Art 2024) and the James Nicol McBroom Memorial Prize for Fine Art (Glasgow School of Art 2022). Chloe was a 2024 Royal Scottish Academy New Contemporary and also was a recipient of the Sarabande Fund for emerging artists for 2024. Some recent group shows include, Twilight Contemporary (2025), Royal Scottish Academy (2024) and recent duo shows include Chilli Arts Projects (2025).
Said by the artist in her own words:
“My practice is grounded in painting, although I work across a range of processes including digital painting, woodwork, metalwork, casting, 3D modelling, printmaking, and laser etching. I use these to explore time, place, and space, particularly their intersection with accessibility, functionality, and visibility.
Our visual awareness is conditioned by what we experience, informing what we notice and rendering certain people or objects invisible. Steps are a barrier for some and an invitation into a space for another. My paintings and sculptures challenge what we perceive as invisible and functional, using mark making and material surfaces to establish-open a curious visual exploration into space and objects.
A key focus within my work are the dichotomies between absence and presence and tangibility and intangibility. I use the interplay of material and image to highlight this disconnect, drawing attention to overlooked bodies and experiences, in constructed environments. At its core, my practice sees making as an act of care, where time and effort embedded into a surface can slow down the gaze and invite viewers to re-examine their relationship with objects, spaces, and one another.”