New Britannia: Reinventing British Iconography

The paintings of New Britannia depart from a digital collage: scraps of images collected, manipulated and merged so that the composite picture points discreetly to a network of forces and assumptions at play underneath. This composition is then transferred to painting, crystallising it in a medium of traditional status, to subvert expectations and effectively monumentalise an absurd amalgam. Meaning emerges through new channels and associations made apparent to the viewer.

In each work, Rachel cannibalises a range of signs and symbols from pop culture to modern art history – Francis Bacon, David Bowie, J.M.W. Turner, Tracey Emin – in a process mirroring the archival system of the World Wide Web. Drawing from styles of Expressionism, Surrealism, Cubism and Pop, she observes and re-presents iconic exports of Britain so that they may be appreciated outside of any ordinary context. Forms melting, disintegrating, eroding or peeling away poke fun at prototypical beauty and our unquestioning acceptance of whatever enters into our fields of vision, be it Internet memes or hyper-rational aesthetics.

Rachel Maggart is a London-based artist and writer, who entered the fine arts through her background in classical piano, music history and theory. Her study of tone painting, chromatic harmony and 20th century minimalist composition influenced her formation as an artist. Rachel received a B.A. in Music from NYU (2007) and an M.A. in History of Art from Birkbeck College (2014), where she attended on a Gordon Square International Award.