Polly Penrose

Polly Penrose studied Graphic Design at Camberwell College of Arts in London. She went on to work in Fashion Styling and after that worked for the photographer Tim Walker. She has always taken photographs, but started to take the practice seriously when she entered and won a competition held by the London Photographic Association in 2008.

Penrose has been taking self-portraits on a ten second timer and more recently a remote for nearly 20 years. Her work is unpremeditated and spontaneous and records her responding to her environment. She explores identity and the opposed notions of vulnerability and empowerment, comedy and tragedy. Her pictures focus less on sexuality and female allure, but retain the awkward, often beguiling force of the body as an object, pushed into a space, forced into a position whilst feigning a sense of normality and control.

She held her first solo show, ‘A Body of Work’, at the Downstairs at Mother Gallery, London, in May 2014, and her second solo show “10 Seconds” at The Hoxton Gallery, London, May 2016. The same year she exhibited in the group shows Self Reflection at The Untitled Space, New York, and All Inclusive at the HVW8 Gallery, Berlin. In 2018, she showed work in Spring Break Art Show in New York, and at Messum’s Wiltshire as part of the group show Image. Her Third Solo show, Self Obscured, was at the Benrubi Gallery, New York, 2019, and the same year her work was shown in Gossamer curated by Zoe Bedeaux at the Carl Freedman Gallery, Margate. In September 2020 she exhibited in ‘Emerging Contemporaries’ at the Michael Hoppen Gallery, and her work is currently showing in A Picture of Health, Woman Photographers from the Hyman Collection, at the Arnolfini Gallery Bristol.

Her work has been featured widely in publications including The Guardian, Dazed Digital, The British Journal of Photography, The Huffington Post, and Artnet.