Top Picks - Love Camden

The exhibition will bring together a group of works made by van der Stokker between 1989 and 2021, which address ideas of society, home, friendship, work, finances, illness and care; as well as speaking to this extraordinary contemporary moment. While some works have previously been realised in other contexts and spaces, others are presented across Camden Art Centre’s galleries for the first time. The exhibition will also include a number of original drawings on paper and works on canvas produced over the last 30 years.

Van der Stokker draws her images with an exacting care and precision, configuring them against one another for the specifics of each space, before scaling them up and executing them directly onto the gallery walls. Her monumental wall paintings – with their distinctive colour palate and highly decorative motifs, including flowers, clouds, patterns and curlicues – play on apparently clichéd stereotypes of femininity, but her work has a depth and toughness that belies its saccharine aesthetic. For more than 30 years she has immersed herself in the supposedly mundane material of everyday life, taking seriously the intricacies of the small, the personal and the overlooked, while at the same time forging a radical feminist practice in a language she has made entirely her own. Behind its apparent softness and sincerity – once described as ‘so sweet it can kill’ – her work remains both provocative and radical.

We will visit a serene and hidden garden in the Inner Circle. We will hear about Prince Regent's grand scheme to make London the most magnificent city in Europe. We will look at how the buildings, gardens and open spaces of Regent’s Park act to enhance our lives.