WHAT? Chantal Joffe: I Remember
WHERE? Victoria Miro, 16 Wharf Road, London N1 7RW
WHEN? Now until 17 January 2026. Free to visit
WHY GO? To feel the love. If ever there’s a time to focus on family life, it’s now at Christmas and no one portrays this in contemporary art as emotionally as Joffe who has been documenting members of her family, friends and acquaintances as they age ever since she started figurative painting.
Joffe has created a new body of work that is bold yet sensitive and this exhibition focuses intimately on her own personal relationships. She arranges family groups huddled together or as couples. They are enigmatic in her distinctive expressive style using brushwork in thick sweeps of muted colour. There’s dad cradling the baby, her sisters on stage in star-spangled costumes or dressed up as Russian dolls and mother taking the kids to the seaside.
It’s impossible not to feel the emotion, as each and every picture has a quiet sensitivity and begs to be analysed. “Memory is hard to define,” says Joffe as she works from her box of family photos, recalling her peripatetic 70’s childhood and artist mother, a catalyst for much of her work. Joffe is an astute chronicler of modern-day domesticity.
IN THE KNOW Should you be in Whitechapel station on the Elizabeth Line platform, you will be surrounded by Chantal Joffe’s reflection of family life in A Sunday Afternoon in Whitechapel, her series of figurative artworks portraying people enjoying a quiet Sunday in the area.