For my Shadow Sculpture series I borrow ‘casting objects’ that are invested with their lenders’ emotions, memories, and sense of identity. I interview each lender about their attachment to their object, and then create a shadow with it. Although the shadow’s composition is influenced by my interpretation of lenders’ stories, ultimately the shadow becomes a detached, autonomous entity, no longer anchored to, or a stand-in for, its casting object.

Reproduced in my paintings, each shadow becomes a manifestation of, or ‘remains‘ of, my exchange with the lender. I build my paintings in many fine, flat, transparent layers, ‘sculpting’ with colour. I am interested in the moment when the painting takes on a life of its own and seems to guide my hand; when the colour-sculpted presence takes on an expression of ‘suchness’, and becomes an intricately detailed, solid form.

My paintings are a visual language resisting verbal interpretation, untied to literal meaning, an ‘absented presence’. They sit silently in the globalised, unanchored, over-information that we increasingly drift in.

Lesley Bunch was awarded the Contemporary British Painting Prize in 2022 and The London Group Cornelissen Prize in 2023. She has exhibited in the UK, Europe, Asia, and the US, with solo shows ‘Absence : Presence’ in Rome, ‘Shadow Language’ in Seoul, and ‘Cut Two Pieces in Three’ in London.

Group shows include: ‘The John Ruskin Prize 2025’ Trinity Buoy Wharf; ‘50th International Award Exhibition’ San Diego Art Institute; ‘Ten Artists to Watch’ LACDA Los Angeles, ‘Talking Things’ Blyth Gallery Imperial College; ‘Darkness Visible’ APT Gallery; ‘Stillness in Movement’ Bermondsey Project Space; ‘Slow Painting’ Studio KIND; ‘Adrift’ Originalprojects; ‘X’ Contemporary British Painting, NCA Newcastle; ‘Silent Disco 23’ Greystone Industries curated by Graham Crowley; ‘Stand and See’ Wimbledon Space; ‘Prized’ OPO Artspace; ‘ArtWorks Open 22’ Barbican Arts Group Trust; ‘Multitude’ Fondazione Luciana Matalon Milan.

Bunch studied at Goldsmiths’ College and the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. She has a BA in Fine Art & Art History and an MA in Archaeology (Japanese art of the Edo Period).

Her work is held in private collections throughout the UK, US, Italy, Germany and South Korea, and in the Priseman Seabrook Collection of 21st Century British Painting.

She is Joint Secretary of Contemporary British Painting and a member of The London Group.