Matilde de Oliveira Roque is an artist from Lisbon, Portugal, living and working in London, UK.
Her paintings begin with a significant visual moment which she decides to spend time with. Reference photographs are collected, archived, and studied.
The stockpile of images act like an ingredients list, from the list she curates a menu. The impulse and decision-making that drives this process is felt more than cognised, almost automatic. As she actualises the “menu”, ideas multiply and web – the body of work becomes a detective’s evidence board. The paintings form constellations, each work a tiny window into a magnum opus which is already present and being excavated, fragments being reassembled. The ‘whole’, or something that approximates an entirety, isn’t created – it exists, or existed, and is surfacing, bit by bit.
