Lizzie Munn

Magic shapes

Standpoint Gallery

31 January – 15 February 2025

Standpoint was pleased to present ‘Magic shapes’, a solo exhibition of modular print-based installations by Lizzie Munn.

A world collapses into colour, pressed into pigment. Semi-solid etching ink softens into buttery pools, shape shifting. Clung to cylindrical rotations until rolled out into two dimensional flats. A slice of something, that once belonged elsewhere in nature, is compressed again and given new permanence; one that acknowledges its fluidity and transformative force.

From sea to land, sky to cosmos, with molecules manoeuvring through machinery, Magic shapes finds a means of advancing forward, using that which has been left behind. Trimmed, severed and almost discarded, remnants of paper on site are accumulated and pollinated by colour.

An affinity grows between maker and environment. The landscape holds out its tongue to absorb moisture from the clouds above. Space repurposed, harnessed, tamed. Through a process both alchemical and mechanical, new forms begin to emerge.

Fragments magnetise to one another, and the dots start to join. Suspending a sense of disbelief, fields of saturation float and collide in an array of constellations. We find ourselves in an alternate realm. The air is just a little bit thinner, feet hover ever so slightly above the ground. We find here, a new form of shape, some kind of magic.

Lizzie Munn is an artist based in London, working across printmaking and installation, her practice adopts analogue processes which distance the hand. Maintaining a somewhat unorthodox attitude to printmaking, Munn generates sequences of monotypes to be employed as units of material matter in an expansive form of image making.

Munn (b.1995, London, UK) completed a BA in Fine Art at Newcastle University in 2018, and recently graduated from the Royal Academy Schools. Solo exhibitions include: ‘The Sun Speaks’, Art in Mayfair Bond Street Flag Commission, London (2024); ‘Royal Academy Schools Show’, Royal Academy of Arts, London (2024); ‘The gold brow plumbs the blue’, Royal Academy of Arts, London (2023). Group exhibitions in 2024 include: ‘Clifford Chance Postgraduate Printmaking’, Clifford Chance, London; ‘Unreal City: Abstract painting in London’, Saatchi Gallery, London; ‘As it is’, Commonage Projects and No Show Space, London; ‘Slow Motion’, Patrick Heide Contemporary Art, London.

Standpoint residencies facilitate artist development and enable the production of new work in a supportive environment, encouraging artistic exchange and collective working. The residencies are designed to be flexible and responsive to the project, needs and desired outcomes of individual participants. This residency is in partnership with Royal Academy Schools.