Namhee Kong

Born in Seoul, Based in London

My practice is grounded in painting as a way of sensing and reconstructing what cannot be held by image alone. I reconstruct memory not as a fixed image of the past, but as something that returns through scent, colour, light, atmosphere, and material sensation. Central to this process is olfactory nostalgia—the way remembered scent can restore fragments of time, place, and bodily feeling before they take a definite visual form.


In my paintings, colour functions as form. Through layering, staining, and shifts in material density, colour builds structure, atmosphere, and emotional temperature, allowing memory to become physically present. At the centre of my practice is maeum, the Korean heart-mind where feeling, thought, memory, and intention remain connected. Each work is also a tribute to the inner child: an act of preserving memory and transforming personal recollection into a shared space of resilience, tenderness, and renewed courage.

BA Chinese Culture & Mass Communication, Sogang University, Seoul (2021)
BA Fine Art: Painting, Camberwell College of Arts, London (2026)
MA Painting, Royal College of Art, London (2027)

2026

BA Painting Degree Show, Camberwell College of Arts, University of the Arts London, London, UK (upcoming)
Non-Place, A-B Gallery, Camberwell College of Arts, London,UK
Threshold, Dilston Gallery, Southwark Park Galleries, London, UK

2025

A Way From Home, Filet Space, London, UK
CHEEKY LONDON 25: LAUNCHPAD, Tradestars Islington, London, UK
Rachael Jones' Gated Canyon Late, Dulwich Picture Gallery, London, UK
Painting & Poetry, Brixton Tate Library, London, UK
Tightrope, The Handbag Factory, London, UK
Enthrall, LumiNoir Art, London, UK
Resonances, Camberwell College of Arts, London, UK

2024

At a Distance, Camberwell College of Arts, London, UK

2023

Artishirt, Unhide, Seoul, South Korea
Summer Nostalgia, Unhide, Seoul, South Korea

2022

Anyone Can Be an Artist, SZQ Gallery, Seoul, South Korea