After the past few years of isolation and misery and disease, everyone’s been dreaming about a holiday. Especially Lydia Blakeley. The English painter’s new show is full of images of empty beaches, tranquil pools, oysters by the sea, deck chairs and lapping waves. They’re fantasies of idealised, wistful, idyllic holidays. But there’s something off about them, something not quite right in all their barren, soft focus, sun-drenched atmosphere: they’re in an uncanny valley of chill, where relaxation is haunted by some unknown threat.
The paintings, some done directly on sun loungers, are inspired by a 1995 Microsoft advertising campaign that asked 'where do you want to go today?’, the implication being that you don’t need to leave your office to travel, you can do it all from the comfort of your enormous, bulky desktop PC.
These paintings are in an uncanny valley of chill.
Blakeley depicts gorgeous rock gardens, cool plunge pools, palm trees over villas, oysters on ice, views out of a plane window – the paintings are clean and crisp but sun bleached, like they’ve been pulled out of a 1980s holiday brochure, their colours lightly faded. The deckchairs act as swooping, alluring canvases for images of frothy shores and waterslides. Cool chests dotted around the space are filled with cactuses and healing crystals. The rose quartz is for love vibrations, the amethyst heals the spiritual body, the green calcite cleanses negative energy.
You get the sense that Blakeley doesn’t buy into crystals, and she doesn’t buy into the dream holiday as promised by your internet browser either. She’s cynical, she’s kicking back against the bullshit, against the hold that the internet has on our psyches, against the promises of corporations, the digital future being forced on our daily realities. All the happiness here – the rest and relaxation, the escape, the wellness – feels corrupted, tainted and mediated by digital life.
These are brilliant paintings, with an amazing concept tying them together, and they will absolutely crush your dream of the perfect holiday.
