Lavinia Harrington (b. 1986)

Italian-British artist Lavinia Harrington received her Master in Fine Arts in Painting at the Slade School of Fine Art in London with a distinction in 2024. Prior to gaining her MFA, she graduated from Oxford University with a degree in art history in 2008 and, two years later, completer her MA at the Courtauld Institute of Art. She has 15 years of experience working in arts education, teaching in museums, galleries and schools across the United Kingdom and Italy, and delivering public talks for the National Gallery in London.

Harrington works primarily on handmade paper, to which she applies pastels, raw pigments and water-based materials. Much of her visceral process involves the folding and layering of paper, often applying the pastel or pigment directly with her hands, soaking and rubbing until the tactile sensibilities of surface and structure resonate with the experiences she is exploring. ‘My pieces emerge over many unseen, unresolved layers and erasures, and are folded and unfolded in the process…I believe in, and am sensitive to, the inherent agency of colour and material…Working with paper has become integral to my practice for the intimacy and immediacy it elicits.’ 

Collage and assemblage are also an important part of Harrington’s method.   

This artwork, owned by EKCART ASIA, was completed in 2024 and is the first of three pieces that share the same title, Alone With You. The series is inspired by a line in Rainer Maria Rilke’s early poetry collection, The Book of Hours. 

In 2022, Harrington took part in the group show, I Felt That, a collaborative project addressing the gender pain gap, at the artist-run space, The Tub, in Hackney, London. More recently, Harrington’s works were included in group shows at the Hew Hood Gallery and at Stephen Ongpin Fine Art, both also in London. In 2024, she was shortlisted for the Chadwell Award and was awarded the Audrey Wykeham Prize for Painting.