Lou Winwood is a British visual artist working in mixed media. Following an extensive career as a creative director, fashion editor, stylist, designer and shop owner, she returned to making art and completed a BA in Fine Art Mixed Media (First Class Hons.) at the University of Westminster in 2023.

 

Drawing on an enduring preoccupation with the detritus of life, her work examines what she terms the ‘corrupt nostalgia’ evoked by everyday mementoes such as old photographs and printed ephemera. Current work includes the Babbacombe '83 series, which emerged from the chance discovery of a set of photographs of her late grandparents having fun at fancy dress parties in the 1980s.

 

These photographs of wrinkled old gents dressed as Old Mother Hubbard and a pensioner Little Bo Peep in a frilly frock are both humorous and unsettling. “I share a sense of loss for the decayed dreams of the subjects depicted in the works,” she notes, “even as [the] frivolity and fun in the photos aid the coming to terms with my own ageing process.”

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