An obsessive image-maker, Kingsley Ifill uses photographs as a starting point for creative experimentation in analogue pathways. “Photography acts as the backbone”, he says, “with everything else relating to it in some way. Acting as a continuous line, other mediums such as painting, printing, sculpture, and artist books, then bounce back and forth, with photography as the connection and mediator.” Ifill carries out all aspects of the creative process by hand, from developing film to printing and bookmaking.
Ifill’s images are immediate and arresting. Many have a diaristic quality – he often captures a decisive moment in which characters are caught in states of passion, abandon or bravado.
Ifill has exhibited internationally at galleries including Eighteen Gallery, Copenhagen and Hannah Barry Gallery, London. His commercial clients include Palace and Rick Owens and his work has been featured in magazines including AnOther, DAZED, System and the British Journal of Photography.
Book-making is a significant part of Ifill’s practice – many of which he makes by hand in small editions in his studio. He has published three books with longstanding collaborator, British artist Danny Fox: Eye For A Sty, Tooth For The Roof (2020); Haze (2020) and Holy Island (2022).
Eye For A Sty… presents the results of a self-initiated project by the duo, for which they spent a four-month period in a rented house in the Hollywood Hills, Los Angeles. During this time, friends and artistic peers joined them to collaborate on a body of work that rethinks the traditional nude, foregrounding all genders in a celebratory series of intermixed photography, collage and drawing.
Holy Island is a visual travelogue that recounts an 8-day trip along the length of the British Isles and back, combining hand-written notes with painting and photography. Published in 2022 to critical acclaim, the book highlights Ifill’s sensitivity towards the connection between people and place.
