Andrew Graves is a London-based painter whose work explores contemporary abstraction through colour, movement and painterly gesture. He studied Fine Art at Kingston University, graduating with First Class Honours in 1990, followed by an MA with Distinction at Middlesex University in 2005. He completed his PhD in Fine Art at Middlesex in 2016, examined by Sonia Boyce and Ian Kiaer. His doctoral research, A User’s Guide for Painters and Cyclists: Very Abstract Painting and Serious Cycling, explored contemporary painterly abstraction in relation to European and mid-century American painting, using the racing cyclist as a model for studio practice.
Graves has exhibited widely in the UK and internationally, including in Switzerland, Belgium, France, the United States and South Korea. His solo exhibitions include The Solo Project at Art Basel, Switzerland (2008), Andrew Graves at Studio 1.1, London (2012), and Back at the Place They Started at French Riviera Gallery, London (2023). He was also the subject of a solo exhibition at Frans Kasl Projects, Eindhoven, in 2023, and Drifting at Apublikgallery, Zurich, in 2024.
Recent group exhibitions include Abstract Colour at Marlborough Gallery, London (2023), which brought his work into dialogue with artists including Gillian Ayres, Lynda Benglis and Dóra Maurer, and Hidden UK, Hidden Ireland at Flowers Gallery, London (2022), selected by Sean Scully. He was also included in the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition in 2024.
Graves was selected for Bloomberg New Contemporaries at The Curve, Barbican, in 2005 and received the Jerwood’s Galleries New Contemporary Painting Prize in 2009. In 2009 he also undertook a residency at Gana Art Gallery in Seoul, and in 2022 was Artist in Residence at Liberty London. His work is held in the HSBC Collection and in private collections in the UK, Belgium, Switzerland and the USA.
