Celina Teague’s paintings are rooted in the uneasy experience of looking at and making sense of the world around us. Drawing on current affairs, environmental crises and the information overload that reaches us through our screens, her work explores the relationship between humans and the natural world, politics and social structures, and what it means to witness events we are often powerless — or unwilling — to affect.
At the heart of Teague’s practice is an interest in contradiction: our capacity to care and disengage, to love and destroy, and to behave as though we are somehow separate from a natural world of which we are entirely a part. In the Tally Paintings, statistics drawn from news events are translated into painted marks, giving visual form to numbers that can otherwise become abstract. The Armchair Series explores the uneasy territory between witnessing and acting, and whether responding to events from afar constitutes meaningful engagement or merely the illusion of it.
(Un)natural World turns more directly to our relationship with nature. Human, animal and botanical forms coalesce and collide, sometimes harmoniously, elsewhere appearing to mutate into something darker. The boundaries between the natural, artificial and human begin to dissolve, reflecting the extent to which we are not simply inhabiting or altering the natural world, but remaking it. Across Teague’s work, humour, absurdity, colour and beauty draw the viewer in, while more uncomfortable details reveal themselves slowly.
Teague studied Fine Art in Oaxaca, Mexico, before completing an MA in Fine Art at Central Saint Martins, London, in 2007. Her work has been exhibited internationally and is held in private and public collections, including the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam. Following a decade of representation by Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery, she is now extending her practice through Studio Celina, reimagining imagery from her painting archive across textiles, objects and the home.