Ishbel Myerscough: Transhumance
1st November 2024 – 4th January 2025
Flowers Gallery
49 Tung Street
Sheung Wan
Flowers Gallery Hong Kong is pleased to present Transhumance, the debut solo exhibition in Hong Kong by renowned British artist Ishbel Myerscough. Known for her highly detailed and meticulously observed portraits, Myerscough delves into the transient nature of life through a series of paintings and drawings created between 2018 and 2024. These works explore the vibrancy of youth, the subtleties of middle age, and life’s impermanence.
Oil on canvas, 120 x 80cm
© Ishbel Myerscough, courtesy of Flowers Gallery
In Ishbel, 2024, a self portrait, Myerscough poignantly explores the sense of invisibility often felt by women of her age. The artist wears a bold and colourful dress, drawing parallels with iconic, flamboyant older women like Iris Apfel and Zandra Rhodes, whose distinctive styles transcend age, making them timeless, confident symbols of
individuality.
This candid self-portrait emphasises the artist’s unkempt hair and bare skin, contrasted with her vibrant, patterned dress, embellished with symbols of eyes, horses, snakes and other motifs inspired by richly symbolic Elizabethan portraiture. This choice of attire is intentional; Myerscough notes the paradox of becoming more invisible when she wears the dress.
Oil on board, 30 x 40cm
© Ishbel Myerscough, courtesy of Flowers Gallery
In Bella on Sofa II, 2018, Bella, 2023, and Black Slip, 2024, Myerscough captures three stages of her daughter Bella’s life, from ages 10 to 16, as she lounges introspectively. These works preserve not just isolated moments but a period of time, reflecting on the ongoing process of parenting— mourning who children were while marvelling at who they are becoming. As she studies Bella, Myerscough subtly explores her own relationship with her mother, contemplating how she might have been seen through her mother’s eyes.
© Ishbel Myerscough, courtesy of Flowers Gallery
Myerscough’s portrait of her son, Black Sofa, 2024, captures the transformation she witnessed when he returned from university significantly taller than he was when he departed. By stretching and elongating his form to fill the sofa, she emphasises the expansive presence of youth.
In Broken Bowl, 2023, Myerscough depicts a cherished bowl gifted by her mother, which slipped from her husband’s fingers and shattered six years after her mother’s passing. The event triggered an overwhelming wave of grief, illustrating how inanimate objects are imbued with deep emotional significance.
Two purposefully unfinished drawings—one of wild daisies Daisies, 2024, flourishing outside and another of a dead houseplant House Plant, 2024, under Myerscough’s care, still beautiful in its decay—further underscore Myerscough’s meditation on the passage of time, and impermanence.
About Ishbel Myerscough
Ishbel Myerscough (b 1968) is recognised for her highly detailed and meticulously observed portrayal of her subject matter, which over the past three decades has primarily included herself, her close friend and fellow artist Chantal Joffe, and their families.
Myerscough combines a focused study of youth and coming-of-age with adult experiences of parenthood, desire and bereavement, evoking the complex cycle of human experience.
Ishbel Myerscough: Transhumance opens on the 1st of November 2024 until the 4th of January 2025 at Flowers Gallery
©2024 Flowers Gallery
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