Tom Hallimond, Girls Night

2026

Oil on canvas

Unframed 61 × 72.2 cm

“When I paint these works, there is often one figure that pulls me in more than the rest, someone I keep returning to, trying to understand, trying to hold onto.

In this painting, it was her.

The photograph comes from my grandfather’s archive in the 1950s, showing a group posed in front of a vivid green curtain. Yet my attention always drifted toward one figure, as if she were waiting to be recognised.

Only later did I realise there was no person there at all.

What I had been returning to was an urn surrounded by flowers, placed for a ceremonial moment after a funeral. Through looking, the arrangement slowly transformed into something else. A figure began to take shape where there had only ever been an object.

When I asked my grandfather who had died, he couldn’t remember. The image had softened with time, losing its edges. And so the misreading remained intact long enough to become something else entirely.”

This painting emerges from an encounter with a photographic archive, where memory, uncertainty, and invention begin to overlap. A figure appears within a reimagined historical moment, formed through both observation and imagination. 

Inclusive of VAT, if exempt please contact bandits@sarabandefoundation.org