Mary Amelia London

I love to work with words, paint and cardboard. Usually, I paint signs on cardboard.

I am interested in the intersection between the political and the psychological: for example, how trauma or complex post-traumatic stress disorder - and recovery from it - might impact political beliefs. But my thinking is informed more by my reading in psychology and economics than by critical theory. I find the notion that the political is personal (ie informed by individual psychology) more interesting than the accepted maxim that the personal is political. Recently I have made works exploring how my own psychological healing has impacted my political outlook in ways I have found unexpected and disconcerting (eg (Off) Centrist Mum (2023) and I've Already Changed My Mind About That Bit (the Hostage to Fortune ongoing series, 2023) see below).

I also love to facilitate fun and joy in a contemporary art world that tends to the earnest. When RCA Contemporary Art Practice students went to the Tate Modern to take part in March 2023’s Tate Late, I discovered to my delight that my painted cardboard signs can be a brilliant catalyst for interaction and engagement at cultural events. Plus they look great on social media, where a handmade, faux naive aesthetic really pops in a homogeneously slick digital visual landscape. My signage for this event involved shamelessly coopting protest aesthetics for institutional ends. To great effect. But don't take my word for it, have a look below...

So at the IRL RCA 2023 show, do come visit Mary Amelia London’s Selfie Art Photo-booth, where my colourful, humorous, outsized analogue versions of digital ‘stickers’ will be available to use as props to enhance your essential show selfies.

Before doing my MA I worked in journalism, marketing and as a mum. I gained a Post Graduate Diploma in Art and Design at the RCA in 2021.

Mary Amelia London holding a sign saying 'The courage that it has taken for me to be standing here today is immense.'

I love cardboard because of its banal ubiquity. It's the quintessential quotidien material of our times: everything in our Amazon-primed, globalised world finds its way to us wrapped in the mundane brown stuff. I relish the challenge of creating something of value - even beauty - from this most humble, dull, unprepossessing of materials. I love it's material qualities too: the way it tends to curl up when you paint on it, and how anything made from cardboard automatically has a down-to-earth, gritty aesthetic.

I find inspiration in the works of other artists who are choosing to work with cardboard: for example, Gillian Theobald's sublime abstract cardboard collages, Narsiso Martinez's moving portraits on fruit boxes, and Rachel Whiteread's recent experiments with cardboard.

Although I sometimes paint and draw images, my first love is text. I used to work in journalism and still love the word play that was part of my life as a sub-editor. I see precedents for my practice in that of artists such as Jenny Holzer and Barbara Kruger, and of course in Bob and Roberta Smith's. (I used to live round the corner from them in east London. Such a lovely couple.)

Protest signs are another key inspiration: a trope of our fractious times, often as witty as they are acerbic. For my recent project Signs of Life, I created protest-style signs reflecting my own Mary-Mary-Quite-the-Contrarian roster of idiosyncratic political and personal concerns. Then shot them in the style of eccentric, occasionally absurd, one-woman protests in the spirit of Oxford Street ‘Less Protein’ campaigner, Stanley Green. (Photos: @andrewmboyd)

Going forward I am keen to embrace more performance in my practice.