Jane Oldfield

Jane Oldfield is a painter who has spent over a decade working with a single subject: flying. The theme has pulled her practice in unexpected directions — into photography, cutout mobiles, and performance — because she believes art should be about more than itself, and pure abstraction isn't enough. Her interest in flight is personal and physical. Her uncle was a photo-reconnaissance Spitfire pilot in the Second World War and left her his flying logbook and medals. She has spent five years trying to learn to glide at Booker Gliding Club near High Wycombe, where the combination of physical coordination, aerodynamic theory and controlled fear has fed directly into her work. Her contribution to Gritted Teeth — five sheets of perspex hung adjacently, painted in acrylic in black and red — extended this sensibility into layered, translucent space, the paintings shifting and overlapping as viewers moved around them. A member of Hornsey College of Art in 1968, Oldfield has been making and showing work for decades, and remains resistant to the pretentious curatorial artspeak she finds in too much contemporary practice.