Sutton Gallery is pleased to present Becoming Something Other, Amanda Marburg’s first exhibition at Sutton since joining the gallery in 2013.

Amanda Marburg’s distinctive paintings are the end product of an extended process involving photography and model making. Her method is to build figures and structures out of malleable materials including plasticine and clay, before photographing the strange worlds she creates against studio backdrops, which then act as the final basis for her paintings. Characterised by an interchange between two and three-dimensional forms, this laborious process eschews painting things from real life, and instead offers a sustained examination and reworking of ideas and tropes that premise painting as a type of model. Marburg draws from film and art history, as well as cultural artefacts and paraphernalia, to create narratives which are often melancholic yet irreverent.

For Becoming Something Other, Marburg partially removes herself from the authorial process, using bold, otherworldly characters created by children and adolescents as the starting point for her new series of paintings. These figures were created during an arts workshop organised by Marburg where participants were encouraged to fashion creatures and scenes drawn from their dreams and nightmares. Capturing the uncanny, surreal and strange, Marburg was impressed by the children’s ability to make and shape without egoism or inhibition.