Michael Bartlett

‘A picture is a secret about a secret, the more it tells you the less you know.’
Diane Arbus
Mike Bartlett makes paintings of galleries, paintings of people, paintings of shows and inevitably paintings of paintings.
This doubling interaction between observer, viewer and viewed becomes an ambiguous statement on the nature of the public act of looking at pictures and the private one of making them.
Bartlett travels around attending exhibitions and recording his observations with a distinctive painting style. Bartlett paints in a loosely expressive style with richly coloured layers.
Behind the everyday ‘going to see a show’ which all artists do, Bartlett has found a conceptual impetus for using this ‘going’ as the spur on for back-in-the-studio image-making.
Photography, images from historical and contemporary art are often included in Bartlett’s paintings.
His source of imagery is often layered and added too to create immersive Utopias and Dystopias which allows him the flexibility to expand his scope to include images from childhood stories or use the ‘Zoo’ as a place of looking and viewing and to explore cultural issues around Art and contemporary life.
‘He approaches each subject with respect and tenderness with a very...

2003 BA Hons Fine Art 1st, Portsmouth
1997 BA hons in Education, Portsmouth

2020 Picture Palace Transition Two London

People Pictures, with Sarah Jeffries, Kevin Dean, Jack House Gallery, Southsea

2019 Mike Bartlett ,Sarah Jeffries, Picture Interrupted, Transition Two ,iLondon

2018 Mike Bartlett Paintings, Alan Kluckow.Fine Art , Sunningdale

RCA Secret

Winter Show, Alan Kluckow Fine Art, Sunningdale.

2017 Very Small Paintings, The Jack House Gallery, Southsea

Stories/ Narratives. Dr. Marius Von Brasch Studio Gallery, Niton , Isle of Wight

2016 30/30 with Enzo Marra, Transition Gallery, London

Let’s make a Better World, the Cello factory London

Secret, Royal College of Art, London


2015 The Names, Transition Gallery at the Sluice Art Fair, London

Miraculous Urgency, Now and Again. Brighton

Secret, Royal College of Art, London

Heads, Yellow Gallery, Italy

2014 ART/Converters! Studio 1.1, London

Atomic, Transition Off-site, London

Secret, Royal College of Art, London

The Lost Hour, Gasp gallery Portsmouth
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