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Lola Stong-Brett (b. 1996, London, United Kingdom; lives and works in Margate) most recently graduated the Tracey Emin Artist Residency (2024) following studies at the Edinburgh College of Art (2016). Her first solo exhibition, For That, I’ll Always Smile, was presented at Carl Freedman Gallery, Margate in 2025. While her work has been included in numerous group exhibitions across the United Kingdom and in Mexico City, Sometime Somewhere Someone Is Dancing marks Stong-Brett’s debut in the United States.
Working at a scale that envelops the body, Stong-Brett’s mark-making is deeply diaristic. Cartoon-like figures emerge from fields of heightened gestural abstraction, recording fluctuating inner states to form an entwined world of direct expression. Across the paintings, figures intertwine, drift apart, cling to one another, or reach beyond each other’s grasp. With great emotional immediacy, the works evoke the complex, shifting choreography of human connection—the experience of holding on and letting go, like witnessing someone you love move beyond you.
Within this symbolic setting, Popeye returns from earlier works alongside Bimbo and a newly introduced female figure. Part childhood nostalgia, part reference to tattoo culture, Popeye first entered Stong-Brett’s paintings as an emblem of raw humanity. The artist recalls initially being drawn to the character’s visual language before discovering the significance of Max Fleischer’s early animations, in which Popeye emerged as one of the first distinctly working-class cartoon characters, depicted within commonplace settings in sharp contrast to the polished fantasy worlds of early Disney. Over time and through repeated use, however, Popeye’s original allegorical charge has loosened and expanded. Evolving into a more fluid emotional architecture, the figure retains its cultural and personal history while remaining open enough to be inhabited by multiple identities and relationships—at times forming a stand-in for the artist herself and the people closest to her.
