Gemma Cumming graduated in 2006 from Loughborough University (School of Art and Design) with a BA in Fine Art. Centering around notions of failed perfection, anticipation and tourism, her work primarily explores imagery that sells an expectation of a place, not it's reality.

Through various media she subverts this kind of imagery. Using paint, she creates giant painted postcards with an ominous twist. Replacing the stereotypical blue skies with darker and/or more ominous ones while retaining the brightly lit foreground, adding other incongruous objects and by highlighting people passivity to their unusual environment she forces the viewer to look again at the scene. She also creates drawings, prints and other works that explore similar themes and concerns.

Her works have an element of site specifity as she prefers to create works for a location that explores that place. She enjoys travelling whenever she can, to gain inspiration, photographs and new postcards. She has created place specific paintings for particular exhibitions throughout the country including London, Windsor and Bath among others.

She has undertaken a number of ambitious projects including painting a life size fibreglass adolescent elephant for summer 2010's Elephant Parade London and a life size orang-utan for summer 2011's Jungle City Edinburgh (both raising funds for 'The Elephant Family' charity. She has also recently had solo exhibitions in Octavia View, Wisbech and South Hill Park Arts Centre, Bracknell.

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Click here to read her statement in full

In 2006 she wrote her University Dissertation on the subject of postcards.
Specifically on the 'Relationships between text and image in western landscape postcards and the formation of public perception of places.'

Click here to download a pdf of the document (2.9 MB)

Gemma can be contacted on gemma@gemmacumming.com