Mia Middleton's (b. 1988 London, England; based in Portugal) pictorial works explore interiority, memory, and evocation. Middleton’s small-scale paintings capture a tension and threshold between conscious and subconscious, desire and aversion, reality, and fantasy. In these intimate freeze-frames, ephemeral moments are stripped of their context and suspended in time, intimating a narrative without creating one and inviting viewers into a psychological framework of uncertainty and discovery. Mia Middleton has exhibited widely internationally.
“I’m drawn to the patina of our internal worlds, the trail of memories and projections we drape over our experiences and the moments that expand or break with that trail. As such the visual language of my work is expansive and dreamlike, wavering between emotions, generations and chronologies. There is potency in the interpolation of primal and domestic, somatic and cerebral which I find myself drawn to and excited by. Each series begins with a slippery thought or feeling, a spectre of loss or desire, and the paintings become an exercise in meeting and working with that glimmer, as murky as it might be.”
Mia Middleton
Awake, 2023
Oil on cotton
6.3 x 6.3 in (16 x 16 cm)
Mia Middleton
Blind, 2023
Oil on cotton
15.75 x 15.75 in (40 x 40 cm)
Mia Middleton
Cover IV, 2023
Oil on cotton
9.84 x 7.87 in (25 x 20 cm)
Mia Middleton
Forest (Hiding), 2023
Oil on cotton
7.87 x 7.87 in (20 x 20 cm)
Mia Middleton
Key, 2023
Oil on cotton
23.62 x 19.69 in (60 x 50 cm)
Mia Middleton
Kitchen, 2023
Oil on cotton
7.87 x 7.87 in (20 x 20 cm)
Mia Middleton
Press, 2023
Oil on linen
11.81 x 11.81 in (30 x 30 cm)
Mia Middleton
Saturday, 2023
Oil on cotton
7.87 x 7.87 in (20 x 20 cm)
Mia Middleton
Spiral, 2023
Oil on linen
7.87 x 7.87 in (20 x 20 cm)
“Mia’s works are smaller in scale and she describes them as freeze-frame moments. She thinks of her paintings as pinpricks of information that allude to a larger whole. She draws on experience and memory – there’s a bit of fantasy and they have this luscious quality to them.”
At the booth of Roberts Projects, visitors are greeted with a meticulously curated selection of artworks, each a standout in its own right, making it a challenge to pinpoint just a few highlights. Jeffrey Gibson—who will represent the U.S. at next year’s Venice Biennale—is renowned for his large-scale beaded paintings and mixed-media works, and presents a new piece at the booth: LOVE ME WITH ALL MY FAULTS (2023), priced at $120,000. At the other entrance is the more muted but equally striking Crossers (2023) by Luke Agada, selling for $12,000. As if distorted by heat, an image appears wavy and shimmering, as if rippling in a heat haze, with lines bending and colors blending in a mirage-like effect.
Roberts Projects is thrilled to announce representation of Mia Middleton, whose pictorial works explore interiority, memory and evocation. Middleton’s intimate paintings capture a tension and threshold between conscious and subconscious, desire and aversion, reality and fantasy. This announcement follows the gallery’s first exhibition of Middleton’s work – Love Story – this past April.
Middleton is a semiotician in a profoundly visual sense. Often working in a sequence of poetic vignettes, Middleton’s uncanny ability to delve into the transience of existence invites viewers to contemplate the interplay between interiority and exteriority, corporeality and the world beyond. The artist’s skillful manipulation of composition, color and subject matter produces striking freeze-frames that compels viewers to cross the threshold into a profound psychological exploration.
By Kayla Curtis-Evans
Mia Middleton doesn’t accept many things at face value. Instead, she dissects the unexpected, the unknown, and the unexplored. Her exhibition at Roberts Projects, aptly titled, Love Story, is her version of a classic narrative exploring interpersonal relationships. With it, she dissects our expectations and assumptions when it comes to navigating the turbulence of love.
