Jamie Luoto – Shadows Of Unseen Grief

Though depictions of grief and anguish abound in art history, visions of women’s suffering have, on the whole, been rendered through careful theatrics, restraint and control – to express emotion can be an act of piety or romance, of sanitised and therefore palatable maternal love, it can be romantic, even desirable but there are rules that have to be obeyed. The emotion must be contained: it must not threaten to seep out into the surrounding world, to shake our unflinching belief in and need for resolution, it must present some kind of finality, a promise of an end. Luoto’s work as a whole pushes back against that narrative, but especially the paintings in this exhibition. These works were born out of what the artist describes as an intense moment of anguish and rupture, and though they were painted after the fact, they are marked by its residues, in some cases quite literally, with surfaces that appear to drip,  leak and ooze. In these works, we are not reliving the experience with her, nor invited to try and make sense of it, but rather to just sit in the shadow world that trauma has opened up.

Jamie Luoto:  Shadows Of Unseen Grief
13 September – 11 October 2025
Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery
36 Tanner Street
London
SE1 3LD

Images courtesy of KHG © Jamie Luoto / KHG