ABOUT

About and Statement

Cecilia Reeve (b.1996) is a London-based Artist exploring the intersection between Painting and Animation. She recently completed her MA in Animation at the Royal College of Art (2023), prior to this she studied Illustration (BA) at the University of Brighton (2018) and her foundation at Falmouth University (2014).

Cecilia has sold work to private collectors and institutions such as Soho House and has exhibited her paintings with galleries including the Delphian Gallery in London. Since 2020 Cecilia has made several collections for Partnership Editions. Her work has been featured in ‘Its Nice That’; Harper’s Bazaar; Elephant; Die Zeit; and The Finacial Times. Her animations have been shown globally at a variety of film festivals such as Sundance Film Festival 2022, London International Animation Festival and BitBang. She has also been included in screenings in institutions including the ICA(London) and the Tate Modern. In 2023 she won the ArtsThread Global Graduate Prize for her RCA graduate film 'Porous'.

In her work Cecilia explores the ethereal worlds of emotion, longing, and dreaming , creating mysterious and at times unsettling atmospheres in her work. Her combined practice of painting and animation and explores the notion of ‘animated painting’, combining materials such as oil on glass, and digital and painted backgrounds to create immersive pieces. Using the boundless possibilities of animation as a tool to bring static pieces to life that are untethered from canvas or paper.

Cecilia is captivated by the literary genre ‘Magical Realism’ and drawn to the moments in between: where dreams and reality collide and the ephemeral shadows that we leave in places passed by. Immersion in water is a pathway into portraying the Unconscious mind; as suspended in water our bodies become fragmented and out of time with the physical world. In her work Cecilia considers the female gaze and in turn her own body, using it as a source of reference and movement, examining and claiming the ways in which the (her) body can be seen and unseen.


 

Cecilia Reeve during her residency at Studio Kura, Japan, 2024

 


EDUCATION

Animation MA, Royal College of Art, 2023

Foundation Diploma, Falmouth University, 2014

Illustration (BA Hons), The University of Brighton, 2018


EXHIBITIONS 

2024 Animation as Art, Museum of Texas Tech University, Texas, March- Summer 2024

2024 Stop and Smell the Roses, February 2024, London

2023 Royal College of Art Degree show, The Trewman Brewery,July 2023, London

2023 The Drawing Stall, January 2023, New York

2021 In the Flesh, Partnership Editions, November/December 2021, London

2021 All about Eve, Delphian Gallery, September 2021, London

2021 Tiny Pleasures Part II, Allmouth gallery, September 2021, Online

2021 Ambrosia, Purslane Art, July 2021, Online

2021 Normality and Other Wonders, July 2021, London

2021 ORIGIN, Delphian Gallery, June 2021, London

2021 ‘Domesticity and the Feminine’, Josephine May Bailey, June 2021 (Online)

2021 Mneymosyne, Purslane Art, March 2021 (online)

2021 ‘The Birthday party’, The artists Contemporary, February 2021 (online)

2020 Works on paper II, Blue Shop Cottage, September 2020, (online)

2018 In Cahoots, July 2018, London

2018 University of Brighton Degree show, July 2018 Brighton

2018 The Bathers, The borough road archive, November 2018 (online)

2015 Falmouth foundation degree show, JULY 2015, Falmouth


PRESS

Elephant Magazine, May 2021, ‘Redrawing the Borders Between the Domestic and the Feminine’, Madeleine Pollard

Partnership Editions, May 2021, Conversations with Friends- Cecilia Reeve 

Interview with ‘The Artists Contemporary’,Anna Woodward, April 2021

Its Nice That, August 2020, ‘Dive into Cecilia Reeve’s soothing, swimming pool-themed imagination in her music video for Nijuu’, Jyni Ong

Creative Boom, July 2020, ‘Cecilia Reeve's hand-drawn animated music video for Nijuu's latest song Blue is an underwater dream’, Katy Cowan

KAVN magazine, September 2018, (publication)

Ache Magazine, august 2019, (publication)