Body Works (Framed)

Ailsa Ogden is an artist living and working in London, previously practising as an artist in the Netherlands. Their work centres on observational portraiture, using ambiguity and exaggeration to explore themes of humanity, queerness and otherness. Ogden embraces the performative and subversive qualities of their subjects and visual identifiers, allowing the medium to act as a conduit for the raw, visceral and intangible. Drawing on slang and colloquial language, their practice initiates a humorous dialogue between classical draftsmanship and subversive tenets.

Ogden’s gender-diverse characters take us beyond a definitive sense of the ‘I’ to embodiments that are more mutable. To get to this place Ogden will redraw a figure over and over, chasing an aslant on recognition that she needs to first get right in order to get wrong. Ogden’s name for this is ‘the agony and the ecstasy’ - Dr Gabe Beckhurst Feijoo - Art Historian and curator.