Solo exhibitions include (Upcoming) Alive in Actual Time, Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery, London (2023); Ariel, Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery, London (2021); Tears Like Northern Rain, Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery, London (2020), Bloomsbury Festival Art Prize, Senate House Library, London (2019) and Louis Bennett: Three Paintings, The Storey Gallery, Lancaster (2017). 

Group exhibitions include Shortlist Exhibition East London Art Prize 2022, Nunnery Gallery, London, UK (2023); Untitled Miami Beach, Art Fair, Miami, USA (2022); Raising Boys, Black White Gallery, London (2022); Northern Deviants, Unit 3 Projects, London (2022); Enter Art Fair, with Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery, Copenhagen, Denmark (2021); Facing the Sun, Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery, Schloss Görne, Germany (2021); Graduate Showcase, Saatchi Gallery, London (2020), RCA/Slade Graduation Show, Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery, London (2020), Offshoot Winter Salon, Offshoot Gallery, London (2019-20), Engendering Men’s Health (With Grayson Perry), UCL, London (2019), Cartoons and Cereal, Offshoot Gallery, London (2019), Pulling Teeth, ASC Gallery, London (2019), Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2018, Liverpool Biennial/South London Gallery (2018), Steady State? (two person show), King St Studios, Lancaster (2018), RSA New Contemporaries 2018,Royal Scottish Academy, (2018), Best of Degree Show, Six Foot Gallery, Glasgow (2017), Best of Scottish Degree Shows,Resonate Arts House, Alloa (2017), Art<100,King St Studios, Lancaster (2017), Serving Suggestion, The Glue Factory, Glasgow (2016); 2 Years Licked, The Grace and Clarke Fyfe Gallery, The Glasgow School of Art, (2015). 

Highlights and collections. Lulu Bennet has been shortlisted for the inaugral East London Art Prize 2022. In 2021, Lulu Bennet received the Chadwell Award. In 2019, she was awarded the Bloomsbury Festival art prize as well as the Slade Print Fair Scholarship and in 2018 she also received Stevenston Award for a Painter of Merit, RSA New Contemporaries.

Other works in the exhibition evoke scenes from childhood. In My London Girlhood two girls in matching checkered dresses stand at the edge of a lake, looking down at the rippling surface perhaps watching where a pebble was dropped or searching for fish. It’s an idyllic, summer’s day – the lake is smooth and glassy with a golden monument spouting water in the distance and sunshine bright on the girls’ backs and yet, there’s something distant or perhaps even eerie about the scene. We are prevented from seeing the girls’ faces and while the image initially appears vivid to the point of almost being photorealistic, closer inspection reveals rough brushstrokes that become more abstracted towards the back of the painting where the trees become fluid, dark green shadows. In this way, Bennett creates a slippage between memory and dream that plays with the idea of rewriting past narratives while also acknowledging the impossibility of altering actual events. The painting Gossip Girls sets up a similar tension. Here, we are presented with a snapshot of two girls chatting on a bus. One is swivelled round in her seat so that we can see her full face, illuminated by a cinematic golden light but we are once again held at a distance – we glimpse the scene through pane of glass while the interior of the bus itself appears almost wavering, comprised of broad, blue brushstrokes.

While most of the works appear to embody the lightness of the artist’s touch, creating a powerful and authentic sense of harmony between the image and its making, Annunciation is more claustrophobic in both style and subject-matter. The painting depicts a young girl sitting in front of her parents in a living room. Like the other paintings in the exhibition, the scene is filled with bright light but the dynamic between the figures is unsettling. This is partly due to the perspective: the viewer is placed behind the parents so that the backs of their heads fill much of the space and we are looking over their shoulders. An old fashioned television set forms another focal point in the background while the girl is smiling across at her mother and clutching a cat to her chest. Here, as elsewhere in the exhibition, Bennett explores the relationship between being looked at as an object and being seen as a subject. The girl may be under the scrutiny of multiple eyes but she is also the only active figure in the painting. In this sense, the work’s title takes on a double meaning referring both to the biblical story in which Mary is told she will become the mother of God and to the idea of finding a voice or taking control of one’s own narrative. While Mary’s story was laid out for her, the anonymity of the adult figures firmly positions the girl as the protagonist.

‘There is a conflict between the experience of coming out being incredibly freeing but also fraught within the context of a contemporary culture that is uniquely and violently hostile towards trans people,’ Bennett says. ‘Making lots of these paintings, I felt as if I were gliding on ice.’ While the ethereal figures and watery brushstrokes may hint at this feeling risk or vulnerability, it is presented as essential to the process of transformation. These are works that celebrate play and the imagination, but also the physical act of painting as a way of cultivating a deeper connection to self.