Beatrice Boyle

Having only graduated from the London College of Fashion in 2008, Beatrice Boyle has already produced a collection for Browns Focus and worked with American Rag Cie, Dazed Japan and Elle. In her exhibition, being held at London's retail mecca 39-39, she has photographed models and then painted over and distressed the image to make something new. This was inspired by her earlier work where she ripped pages out of fashion magazines and distorted the perfect images of the models to subvert their meaning, taking them from being a commodity to a work of art.

Dazed Digital: What's so special about you then?
Beatrice Boyle: Umm...

DD: You have a background in art and fashion, how do the two relate for you?
Beatrice Boyle: I don’t see them as two separate entities, I approach my work in either from the same direction... although I’m aware people perceive them differently. But Richard Prince and Takashi Murakami collaborating with Louis Vuitton, Richard Phillips collaborating with Jimmy Choo, I think people are more open to the idea of fine art and commercial fashion merging now. I’m happy for people to not be able to define me as one or the other though.

DD: Your work started with pictures of models from magazines, why did you choose that as your point of reference?
Beatrice Boyle: Because I’m obsessed with magazines. In all honesty, I think I was sick of that situation at art school where they constantly force you to do something different and outside of your comfort zone, so I rejected it and used something I was immersed in and would have been embarrassed to use, magazines. The work was about defacing the original image and subverting it, so the concept was directly linked to the source.

DD: Why did you start using your own photography rather than the models?
Beatrice Boyle: I still work from pages ripped from magazines, but I began taking my own photographs because it meant I could construct the entire image, from selecting the model, the pose and the composition to the way in which I worked with it. In the new paintings, which are from my own photographs, the concept is different but there is still that tension between the original photograph and the new image that has been created.

DD: You've collaborated with some big brands like Browns and American Rag Cie, who would be your dream collaboration?
Beatrice Boyle: There are so many. Artists, designers, brands, magazines... I love collaborating on a project, when you both bring ideas and they just work, but create something unexpected and unpredictable, it’s exciting. MAC. Supreme. Colette in Paris. And I love what they do at Opening Ceremony.

DD: What are you planning on doing next?
Beatrice Boyle: I’ve been printing on silk and working on scarves, the colours on silk have a luminescent quality which you can’t achieve printing on any other fabric. I wanted to design scarves because they are relatively unrestrictive compared to other garments, in terms of size and dimensions and they are like a canvas, until you wear them and the print is obscured and altered completely. I like that adaptability. I am also currently working on larger scale paintings.

Beatrice Boyle's 39-39 exhibition is open until March 2011. 3939shop, The Basement, Life, 2-4 Old Street, London, EC1V 9AA