Celia Paul: Colony of Ghosts

Victoria Miro Gallery, London – 14th March to 17th April 2025

A highly personal and haunting collection of works by renowned artist Celia Paul.

Described as Impressionism meeting Modernism, Paul’s work has an other worldly quality. Constancy and change, and how the past is always held in dialogue with the eternal present of the painted
image, are, for Paul, inextricably linked to a consideration of self: the immediate self as well as the selves
we have been in shadows, mirrors or memories, and the many selves we recognise or perhaps refute in
the perception of others. Writing in her forthcoming monograph, the artist comments,

Writing in her forthcoming monograph, the artist comments,

‘My young self and I – we are the same person. I can stretch out my old hand – with its age spots – and hold my young unblemished hand.’

As an ex student and partner of Lucien Freud it is perhaps the work that gives the exhibition its title, Colony of Ghosts which provokes an insight into the mind of Paul. The painting is inspired by John Deakin’s well-known photograph of School of London painters lunching together in Wheeler’s restaurant in Soho in 1963. In Paul’s painting the focus is tightened to four men: Lucian Freud, Francis Bacon, Frank Auerbach and Michael Andrews. Paul feel’s like something of an outsider but very much part of the group.

‘They represent “home” to me because I belong among them, even if they can’t let me in,’

Celia Paul

The exhibition runs until 17th April, 2025 at the Victoria Miro Gallery