Jolene Liam is an Artist and Architect from Singapore and based in London.

Her practice explores different ways of thinking about and describing the places around us, from everyday and in-between spaces to imagined landscapes. She believes that the spaces we inhabit and the objects we collect reveal a lot about us; expressions of our identities, habits, and personalities. Jolene’s drawings include floorplans divested of the architecture itself and defined through the things inside it, spaces described through visual inventories of the objects within, and walking maps of places she has visited. Breaking away from the confines of orthographic drawing lets her explore the gaps between conventional methods of representation, mapping things that cannot be measured.

Working in the expanded, experimental field of drawing and painting enables Jolene to find new ways of interrogating space. The ‘in-between’ and the ‘not quite’ are her tools of choice: drawing with string and jesmonite, or painting on the back of canvases, creating works that sit on the boundaries between drawing, painting and sculpture. Jolene is interested in how we construct artworks physically and conceptually, drawn to the by-products of art practice and incorporating materials from domestic life or the construction industry. Each work is a site with unique constraints and the act of painting becomes the accrual of information over time, making interventions that respond to their specific site conditions.
‍
Jolene recently completed the Off-Site Programme at Turps Art School, an artist-led painting programme. Previously, she studied at the Essential School of Painting and Royal Drawing School in London. Before pursuing her art practice full time, Jolene practiced as an architect at Studio Egret West and RSHP. She trained at the University of Westminster, National University of Singapore and Technische Universität München.
‍
Her work has been selected and shortlisted for several awards including the Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize, Art Gemini Prize, Derwent Art Prize, World Illustration Awards, and Royal Institute of British Architects’ Eye Line Drawing Competition. She has also exhibited at the Royal Academy of Arts Summer Exhibition, Royal Scottish Academy Annual Exhibition and the Royal Watercolour Society Open. Her drawings have been featured in several issues of the RIBA Journal. 

Studio photo by Crispian Blaize.