Alison Jacques presents ‘How Much Love Can a Love Bird Love, Can a Love Bird Love a Love Bird’, a solo exhibition of new paintings by Sophie Barber (b. 1996, St Leonards-on-Sea, UK) and the artist’s inaugural show at the gallery. The exhibition follows Barber’s solo show at Goldsmiths CCA, London (2020), curated by Sarah McCrory.
Barber’s chosen title began life as an otherwise innocuous entry in the artist’s internet search history. (Contrary to popular belief, lovebird parrots do not die when separated, although the strength of their connection is heartening.) But in its repetition, the reconstituted tongue twister touches upon the unseen relationship between each of Barber’s subjects. Beneath the oil and the presence, these are paintings about affection, attraction, memory, love; the way in which certain images attach themselves to us – and we to them – for reasons more profound than subject matter alone. ‘To do this’, Barber says of her practice and of painting more broadly, ‘there has to be a level of obsession with an image. You have to be obsessed.’
Indeed, Barber’s work is less concerned with the practice of painting than the process that brings it to life: the manner in which imagery appeals to us, presses into us and, ultimately, becomes part of our visual language.
