‘There's a lot to fear and a lot to love in this world’: Penny Goring unveils new work in London

‘The world seems dystopian to me. I make it like I see it,’ says London-based artist Penny Goring. ‘All of our personal narratives are embedded in the world we live in, and our opinions, feelings and memories arise from this place, which is an undeniably dystopian one.’

Goring intertwines these fantastical, otherworldly themes through work which draws on her own personal traumas, making for a rich melting pot of emotion. Humour, anger, shame, grief – they’re all prevalent in works which themselves are juxtapositions of mediums, a tantalising mix of everyday materials and old-school computer technologies such as Microsoft Paint.

In her exhibition at London’s Arcadia Missa, Goring presents a collection of large-scale Microsoft Paint collages, known as macros. Through bold text and often contrasting imagery, the vulnerability of the artist is laid bare in works which are sometimes funny, sometimes mischievous, but mostly very, very moving.

Goring began creating visual poetry in MS Paint in 2012, sharing the resulting images on Facebook, tumblr and NewHive. An integral part of the era's alt lit poetry community, Goring enjoyed the freedom that words, fonts and image macros provided. ‘I use MS Paint because it is lo-fi, erratic, unprofessional, unreliable, and its limitations force me to improvise,’ says Goring. ‘It's a free toy. I avoid logical structures and monetised systems that operate under the pressure to perform and deliver. I prefer to make do and mend, invent my own ways to do things. Photoshop is for graphic design, I'm not interested in that, I'm making visual poems and there are no rules except mine. My idea of perfect is something that's simultaneously totally wrong and totally right, that works even though it shouldn't, broken but functioning, held together by sticky tape and daydreams, driven by fear and love.’

Mythical worlds sharpen the emotions that drive them in the works – so the word ‘Meds’ blooms on a sea of flowers in Prayer, a cynical questioning of the paradise they promise. The cut-out of Goring’s face over ‘Huge War Piggy Hell Rides’ in Piggy speaks to a naked vulnerability. ‘Wobble’, over gloriously gleaming sharp and precise material, is a delicious disparity.

‘I'm embracing the gallery with my magical territorial pissing,’ says Goring. ‘Putting words onto images causes both these elements to change and resonate, together becoming what I think of as visual poetry. This process feels magical and territorial.’

She adds: ‘I'm weaving fable into memory, imagination into history, the personal into the political, until the works become universal expressions of the state of emergency. Everything I make is on some level a suicide note, that's how I'm still here. There's a lot to fear and a lot to love in this world.’

'Penny Goring: Cold Hunt Corsage' at Arcadia Missa, London until 15 April 2025

arcadiamissa.com