Tamsin Relly

About the artist

Tamsin Relly was born in Rooi-Els, near Cape Town, South Africa, on 27 May 1981, and grew up in Somerset West in the Western Cape. She moved to London in 2009 (Ben Uri Research Unit) and completed an MA in Fine Art at City & Guilds of London Art School in 2011 (Tamsin Relly).

Her work in painting, printmaking and photography explores our reciprocal relationship with the planet's ecology as the climate shifts, and her research has taken her to the Arctic Circle, the Eden Project in Cornwall and Las Vegas (Tamsin Relly). Her residencies include The Arctic Circle in Svalbard in 2014, RE-THINK: Environment at the National Maritime Museum, London, in 2015 and Arteles in Hämeenkyrö, Finland, in 2016 (CV, February 2025). For many years she has made monotypes by painting in watercolour onto a clear plate and pressing the image onto damp paper (Ben Uri Research Unit).

Her solo exhibitions include 'Jungle Snow' at The Place Downstairs, London, in 2014 (Tamsin Relly) and 'Forest Memory' at Brocket Gallery, London, in 2017 (Ben Uri Research Unit). Her work is held by the National Maritime Museum and Hogan Lovells in London and by the Spier Arts Trust in South Africa (CV, February 2025). Through the charity Hospital Rooms she has made permanent work for locked and secure mental health units in the UK (Tamsin Relly), including large-scale works in 2018 for Eileen Skellern 1, a women's ward at the Maudsley Hospital in London (Ben Uri Research Unit).

Sources

1. Tamsin Relly, About
2. Tamsin Relly, 'Jungle Snow'
3. Ben Uri Research Unit
4. Tamsin Relly CV (Feb 2025), via closeltd.com
5. Saatchi Art profile