Mixing It Up at the Hayward Gallery

An exhibition that brings together works by 31 contemporary painters living and working in the UK has opened at the Hayward Gallery.

Featuring artists from 28 years old to 87 from different backgrounds and genders, the 130 works in Mixing It Up reflect an increasing interest in painting as a medium in which things can be mixed up as in no other.

The paintings displayed are often ambiguous and sit between genres.

Some of the artists in the exhibition explore painting’s time-travelling possibilities.

Lubaina Himid examines histories of racial injustice linked to colonialism, reminding us that their consequences are being played out today.

Lisa Brice mounts a corrective to male-dominated art history through her depictions of female painters at work.

Mohammed Sami, who grew up in Baghdad, probes the traumatic memories that linger in the wake of military conflict.

Other artists use painting as a site of assemblage to suggest connections between things we might never normally link.

Allison Katz’s paintings overlay motifs into composite images that operate at the level of double entendre or riddles.

Issy Wood paints an array of unsettling artifacts and antiques onto velvet, mixing up references to past and present in a manner that she describes as ‘temporal gaslighting’.

Vivien Zhang’s paintings are dizzying kaleidoscopes that pose questions about the accelerating rate of our information age.

Mixing It Up: Painting Today highlights the country’s emergence as a vital international centre of contemporary painting.

Mixing It Up: Painting Today is open until December 12.

Pic: Lisa Brice Smoke and Mirrors 2020 in Mixing It Up Painting Today Photo Rob Harris