JOLENE LIAM

Her background as an architect has fuelled an interest in observing and documenting how places are experienced, whilst exploring the gaps between conventional methods of representation. These include floor plans divested of the architecture itself and defined through the things inside it, spaces described through visual inventories of the objects within, and walking maps of places she has visited. In the process, Jolene hopes to encounter different ways of thinking about and depicting the spaces around us, especially everyday and in-between spaces.

Working in the expanded, experimental field of drawing enables Jolene to find new ways of interrogating space. The ‘in-between’ and the ‘not quite’ are her tools of choice: drawing with string and jesmonite, or painting on the back of canvases, creating works that sit on the boundaries between drawing and sculpture.
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Jolene recently studied on ‘The Bigger Picture,’ a postgraduate fine art course at the Essential School of Painting. Previously, she practiced as an architect for over seven years at Studio Egret West and Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners, and trained at the National University of Singapore, Technische Universität München and the University of Westminster.

Jolene's work has been shortlisted for several awards including the Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize, Art Gemini Prize, World Illustration Awards, Art Edit Self-Represented Artist Award and Royal Institute of British Architects’ Eye Line Drawing Competition. She has also exhibited at the Royal Scottish Academy Annual Exhibition and the Royal Watercolour Society Open. Her drawings have been featured in several issues of the RIBA Journal, an architecture magazine published by the Royal Institute of British Architects.