Lisa Milroy

Lisa Milroy was born in Vancouver, Canada in 1959. She lives and works in London and Kent. Still life is at the heart of Milroy’s practice. In the 1980s, her paintings featured ordinary objects depicted against an off-white background. Subsequently her imagery expanded to include depictions of objects within settings, as well as landscape, architecture, people, textiles and pattern. As her approaches to still life diversified, so did her manner of painting, giving rise to a range of stylistic innovations. Throughout her practice, Milroy has been fascinated by the relation between stillness and movement, and the nature of making and looking at painting.

Recent solo exhibitions include the colour blue, Kate MacGarry, London (2025); Paper Safari, One Off Contemporary Art Gallery, Nairobi, Kenya (2024); Correspondence, Kate MacGarry, London (2023); If the Shoe Fits/Bien dans ses Pompes – Peintures de Lisa Milroy, Frac Occitanie Montpellier, France (2021); Exchange – Paintings by Lisa Milroy, White Conduit Projects, London (2021); taking the side of things, m2 Gallery, London (2021); Ensemble/Together – Paintings by Lisa Milroy, FRAC Occitanie Montpellier, France (2020) and Here & There: Paintings by Lisa Milroy, Parasol unit foundation for contemporary art, London (2018). 

Recent group exhibitions include Contemporary Song, Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art, Porto, Portugal (2024-5); Dialogues with Turner: Evoking the Sublime, touring exhibition at Grimaldi Forum, Monaco (2024); Museum of Art Pudong, Shanghai (2024-25); Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall, Taipei (2025); National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo (2026-27) and Nakanoshima Museum of Art, Osaka (2027); The Shape of Things: Still Life in Britain, Pallant House Gallery, Chichester, UK (2024); Forty Years of The Corridor, National Gallery of Iceland, Reykjavik (2023); À toi de faire, ma mignonne, Musée Picasso, Paris, France (2023); Found Cities, Lost Objects, Arts Council Collection touring exhibition curated by Lubaina Himid, Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, Southampton City Art Gallery, Royal West of England Gallery, Bristol and Leeds Art Gallery (2022-23); A Century of the Artist’s Studio: 1920 – 2020, Whitechapel Gallery, London (2022) and Wearing and Staring: YANAGI Miwa and Lisa MILROY, Fukuoka Art Museum, Japan (2020).

Milroy won the John Moores Painting Prize 1989 and was elected to the Royal Academy of Arts in 2005. She was Artist Trustee at Tate from 2013 to 2017 and Liaison Trustee to the National Gallery from 2015 to 2017. She was Head of Graduate Painting at the Slade School of Fine Art, UCL from 2009 to 2024. In 2015, she initiated Hands On Art Workshops, an ongoing programme of practical art workshops for primary and secondary school students in Kakuma Refugee Camp, Kenya, working with UNHCR, the UN refugee agency. Public collections include British Museum Collection of Prints and Drawings, London; Tate, London; FRAC Occitanie Montpellier, France; Metropolitan Museum of Art, USA; Kunstmuseum Bonn, Germany and Fukuoka Art Museum, Japan, amongst others.