Julie Caves - "Playing Gooseberry" 2025
oil on panel
10 cm x 7.5 cm
Julie Caves is a painter, writer and curator working mainly out of Margate. BAGT lists her as an artist at Blackhorse Lane Studios, 114a Blackhorse Lane, London E17 6AA, and Creative United records that she has had a studio at Barbican Arts Group Trust’s Walthamstow studios for more than ten years.
Caves’s painting is grounded in an extended investigation of sunlight, colour, perception and painterly ambiguity. Public artist profiles describe her as “fascinated by sunlight,” interested in allowing viewers to find their own story in the painting, and attentive to seeing “the paint before seeing the subject matter.” Axis describes her practice directly as painting sunlight, colour and shapes.
Her work often occupies a threshold between still life and abstraction. In recent paintings, Caves observes light as it falls across objects, interiors, surfaces and domestic arrangements, building images that hold a brief perceptual moment while retaining the physical presence of paint. A 2025 exhibition text for Sea Change describes her work as “vibrant, light-filled paintings” exploring the boundary between still life and abstraction, while a 2024 profile emphasises the temporal quality of her paintings: a side-glance into a room or onto an object.
Caves’s background in sculpture, printmaking, video, sound, book arts and curating continues to inform her painting. In a 2013 interview, she described beginning with drawing and painting in California, studying sculpture and screen-printing in Texas, making video and sound works in Valencia, and later completing an MA in Book Arts at Camberwell College of Art. Her major 2013 exhibition Curiosity: an art practice as a way of looking included painting, sculpture, drawing, installation, sound, video and participatory work, with colour as a central thread.
Alongside her studio practice, Caves has a substantial editorial and technical writing practice. Jackson’s Art Blog identifies her as a long-standing contributor and former editor of the blog for ten years, with particular expertise in art materials, oil painting and acrylic painting. This research-led knowledge of materials is closely aligned with her painting practice, where colour, surface, medium, scale and looking are treated as active subjects.
Selected solo, two-person and project-based exhibitions
2025 - Sea Change, Janet Banzaca and Julie Caves, Joseph Wales Gallery, Margate.
2022 - Shimmy, The Lido Stores, Margate; listed by ’cene Magazine as a recent solo show.
2021 - Lost in the Woods, The Stone Space Gallery, London; listed by ’cene Magazine as a recent solo show.
2017 - Of All the Possibilities: Julie Caves and Daniela Rizzi, Pictorem Gallery, London.
2016 - After the Sea, Bernie’s, Margate; two-person exhibition.
2016 - Painting Without Beginning or End, Heathcote Arms, London.
2013 - Curiosity: an art practice as a way of looking, The Crypt Gallery, London.
2012 - They Do Things Differently Here, BAGT ArtWorks Project Space, London.
2012 - Cloud 8, Arts and Crusts, Chapel End, London.
2012 - SKY, Wood Street Market, London.
2007 - Colour Matters, Oxford House, London; two-person exhibition.
2006 - Foyer Exhibition, Pleasance Theatre, Islington, London.
2001 - Me On Tuesday, Me On Wednesday, Me On Thursday…, The New Gallery, University of Texas.
Selected curatorial projects
2022 - Still Looking, The Lido Stores, Margate; ArtRabbit lists the exhibition as curated by Julie Caves.
2020 - Waving in the Distance, Terrace Gallery, London; painting exhibition curated by Julie Caves.
2012 - Independent Curating certificate, Central Saint Martins.