Michael Ocloo

Cinematic Enlargement

Residency Presentation

10-20 July 2025

Standpoint presented Michael Ocloo’s first London solo exhibition ‘Cinematic Enlargement’.

Ocloo is a contemporary painter creating fragmented paintings of anonymous figures. Produced during a ten-week residency at Standpoint, Ocloo describes his work as figurative expressionism: “I don’t show faces, but rather it’s about seeing and analysing the clothes people choose, with focus on texture and body language. It’s about considering why they wear these specific clothes – what is the occasion, how they are feeling, what is going on”

TV and media are clearly rooted in the process of Ocloo’s practice. His subjects are lifted from popular shows that revoke experiences from a young age for the artist, alongside images from his own friendship circle. “As I begin to create my paintings I watch all kinds of shows and movies, while I do that I select different scenes or various clips. I occasionally use my phone to take photographs of people from incomparable views as they appear in many circumstances."

Figures are continuously fragmented and cropped, with a focus on the contrast of where patterned textiles meet the body. Ocloo employs a scientific eye to examine patterns in the source imagery, which the artist says gives him an open space to clear his mind: “When I paint peoples’ fashion, clothes full of materials or dazzling or dull textures, I analyse the ambiguity going on in them and come up with many perspectives about what the patterns can be.’

Ocloo was selected to take on the professional practice residency by his tutors at UAL Camberwell, from where he recently graduated with an MA in Fine Art.

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.

This residency is in partnership with UAL Camberwell College of Arts and supported by The Fenton Arts Trust.