Emily Gillbanks

EMILY GILLBANKS (b. 1999) is a Painter and Researcher who grew up on the Essex and Suffolk border, United Kingdom. She pursued her BA with Honours in Fine Art at the University of Suffolk, and is a two-time recipient of the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grant.

Emily was most recently awarded the Royal College of Art’s Fribourg Philanthropies Painting Prize 2022, and in 2021 her painting Three Things was awarded The de László medal for Excellence by The de László Foundation.

Three Things, was described as "the for the best work from life" in the Royal Society of British Artists Annual Exhibition 2021. This award further inspired her concept of quasi-Dasein and her questioning of what it means to paint from life today when the physical presence of a sitter is no longer a beings most eminent mode.

I observe people akin to a data attainment process.

From self-portraits to portraits of my family and friends I paint people underpinned by technology. My practice is both at odds and indebted to a trajectory of social realism.

Through technological ways of being-present I think through what a face-to-face encounter is when there is a cybergaze. I want to know to what extent physical presence is no longer beings most eminent mode, which I have been examining through my coining of quasi-Dasein (a virtual, seeming, or partial way of feigning physical presence).

I play with levels of representation, combining a hybridisation of traditional techniques and contemporary technologies. A prevalence of digital discourses in my everyday life started my interest in our fundamental ontological ground and how it is being returned to us through our own ontically situated existence.

I sensitise and desensitise economies of detail; asking how can we paint from life today when screens have become representative and vernacular accounts of vision?

Identifying With Things – Left: Recalling Things, Colin and Diane Yates, Oil Paint on Stretched Canvas, 175cm x 135cm. Centre: Anticipating Things, Charlie Lewis Marffy and Emily Gillbanks, Oil Paint on Stretched Canvas, 170cm x 130cm. Right: Looking-Up To Things, Stephen and Paula Gillbanks, Oil Paint on Stretched Canvas, 175cm x 135cm.

Four Things – Katherine Bailey and In Keun Lee (Moon Lee), Oil Paint on Stretched Canvas, 200cm x 160cm.

Looking-Up To Things – Steve and Paula Gillbanks. The Artist's Parents. Oil Paint on Stretched Canvas, 175cm x 135cm.

Anticipating Things – Charlie Lewis Marffy and Emily Gillbanks. Oil Paint on Stretched Canvas, 170cm x 130cm

Recalling Things – Colin and Diane Yates. Oil Paint on Stretched Canvas, 175cm x 135cm.

Things Being-Apart – Emily Gillbanks and Charlie Lewis Marffy on FaceTime. Oil Paint on Stretched Canvas, 70cm x 50cm.

Things Trying To Watch Things – Freddie and Stephen Gillbanks. Oil Paint on Stretched Canvas, 170cm x 130cm.

Things Reading And The Reading Of Things – Steve Gillbanks. Oil Paint and Oil Stick on Stretched Canvas, 120cm x 100cm.

Three Things – Emily and Freddie Gillbanks. Oil Paint on Stretched Canvas, 164cm x 121cm.

The ongoing series of oil paintings titled Identifying With Things, depicts and explores the relationships I have with the people closest to me. Through a field of new figurative painting my practice is positioned both at odds and indebted to a trajectory of Realism.

In line with Linda Nochlin's assertion that "...each generation must reinvent reality anew," I look to how traditional realism can today reflect the fragmentation of modern life.

In a time where my family, and friends were physically being-apart we found ways of digitally being-together. My relationships to people became dependent on a network of intergenerational connections, where our lives played out through screens.

Being cgi Family Figurative Identity People Presence Realism Representation Screen Virtual Virtuality

The Coining of Quasi-Dasein: To What Extent is Physical Presence No Longer Beings Most Eminent Mode?, media item 1

The Coining of Quasi-Dasein: To What Extent is Physical Presence No Longer Beings Most Eminent Mode?, media item 2

This Webinar transcript of a fictional online seminar questions to what extent physical presence is no longer beings most eminent mode through the coining of quasi- Dasein in action. The stratagem of the discourse intends to play with levels of representation, looking to how the prevalence of digital discourses sees our fundamental ontological ground returned to us through our own ontically situated existence.

The writing imitates the estranged effects that play out through the medium of videotelephony, highlighting the state of things now and what it means to exist. The discourse is designed to feel like it plays out through the reality of real time, mimicking the crucial way in which we are required in our everyday lives to negotiate virtual spaces when Being is currently being reframed in response to a non-human entity being-alongside-us, drawing attention to our co-belonging with a virus through participants virtually experiencing the Camera degli Sposi.

Keywords: Quasi-Dasein, Dasein, Being, Mixed-Reality, Representation, Virtuality, Quasi-Cause, Unreality, Unrealism, Posthumanism, Macroevolution, Screen, Renaissance, Multiple Ontologies, Spaces-of-Difference, Virtual Presence.

Being cgi figurativepainting Macroevolution Mixed-Reality Posthumanism Quasi-Dasein Screen Spaces-of-Difference Unreality Virtual Presence Virtuality

Emily Gillbanks

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Royal College of Art

Emily Gillbanks

The Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation, The South Square Trust, The Yorkshire Ladies Council of Education, The Fribourg Philanthropies Painting Prize, and The De László Foundation.

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About

Royal College of Art