Charis Copp

Charis is fascinated by the graphic and grotesque; her practice specialises in exploring the internalised relationship we share with our bodies. She likes to express and embrace the repulsion we sometimes feel when looking at ourselves in the mirror. Her work intends to magnify this emotion and create almost monstrous forms.

Charis works predominantly with oil pastels, straddling the line between traditional figurative painting and the postmodernist desire to create work that is autobiographical in nature. She explores skin as a surface, her heavy depiction of pimples serves to actively contradict the clinical ideal of female beauty. She has no interest in creating sentimental work and instead wants to agitate and provoke. Charis produces visually challenging imagery to elicit a sense of distress and discomfort within the viewer.