Holly Mills (b. 1990, London, England) graduated from The Drawing Year in 2018 and had previously studied at Camberwell College of Arts, winning the V&A Student Illustrator of the Year award in 2012.

Holly is interested in how the act of reproducing a memory pushes the original further into fiction. It is this meeting point of remembered and imagined, dream and reality that she explores through making. Ambiguous in-between spaces give form to quiet thoughts and summon the sensations and feelings of places the artist has been. Flattened picture planes are often divided up, multiple moments happening at once. Recurring symbols and leaning figures, blurred in movement, create an almost dreamlike visual language.

Working across painting, drawing and printmaking, Holly’s practice can be seen as a visceral reaction to both text and lived experience. A desire to explore the mystery of memory and to use this to weave new narratives permeates much of her work.

Selected exhibitions include Best of the Drawing Year (Christie’s, London), Tickle Torture and Contemporary Visions VII (Beers, London) and The Pictionary Individual (Real Pain Fine Arts, Los Angeles). Recent works recall walks in Scottish hills, an exploration of sensory memory, where body and landscape become one.