Julie McDermott is a painter based in Brighton, UK. Also going by the name of Miss Ping she plays in the melancholy cat noise, alt-folk duo Things in Herds and contributes drawings to small press magazines such as Quiet Feather, Fencezine & Naked Fighting.

PAINTINGS

These recent intimately scaled paintings invite the viewer into a world of curious and closely observed detail, recalling childhood preoccupations with miniature and invented places.

Inhabiting the paintings are various creatures, caught up in seemingly momentous and ridiculous narratives. The compositions emerge from the playful arrangement of an array of scale models and hint at battle formations, organised games and other strange and ambitious projects.

The paintings have evolved from observations of animals roaming around in complex groups and from a parallel fascination with the spectacle of large scale human endeavours, particularly as depicted in the history of painting. The influence of some of the conventions of history painting; dramatic lighting, stilted poses and fake looking sets, combined with a hovering perspective, lends the work an absurd theatrical edge.

EXHIBITIONS & PROJECTS

2007 Aug. Art-work Things in Herds LP 'Nothing is Lost'

July 2006 & March 2007. Group exhibitions La Radeaux & Grand mais aussie Petit with Julian Rowe & Steph Goodger, Salon Des Fables, Bordeaux.

2005 Sep. Art-work Things in Herds LP 'Everything has to End Somewhere' UK release on Fence Records.

2005 Half Light exhibition with Nicholas Wriglesworth, Permanent Gallery, Brighton.

2004 The Hunting Art Prize exhibition. Royal College of Art, London.

2004 The Discerning Eye, Mall Galleries, London

2004 Sussex Open, Brighton Museum and Art Gallery

2003 Multiples, Permanent Gallery, Brighton. December.

2003 Horse War, solo exhibition, Borders Store, Brighton.

2001 Paper View, group exhibition, Start Contemporary Gallery, Brighton.

1999 Paintings commissioned by South Ribble Borough Council for Worden Arts Centre, Leyland, Lancs.   

AWARDS

Meynal Fenton Prize, The Discerning Eye 2004.