Chantal Joffe in-conversation with William Feaver

Possessing a humorous eye for everyday awkwardness and an enlivening facility with paint, Chantal Joffe brings a combination of insight and integrity to the genre of figurative art. Joffe's paintings always alert us to how appearances are carefully constructed and codified, whether in a fashion magazine or the family album, and to the choreography of display. She ennobles the people she paints by rehabilitating the photographic image but, crucially, recognises that it is paint itself rather than attendant sociopolitical ideas that gives her paintings complexity and keeps us looking. Chantal Joffe lives and works in London. She holds an MA from the Royal College of Art. She was awarded the Royal Academy Woollaston Prize in 2006. Joffe has exhibited nationally and internationally at the Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase, New York (2009); University of the Arts, London (2007), MIMA Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art (2007), Royal Academy of Arts, London (2005), Galleri KB, Oslo (2005) and Bloomberg Space, London (2004).