Summer Mapplebeck was born in Aberdeen, Scotland in 2001 and graduated from Gray’s School of Art in 2023 with a BA (Hons) in Painting. She is currently studying MA Painting at the Royal College of Art in London.
Mapplebeck’s current practice is varied, blurring the lines between painting, printmaking and drawing: all works produced can be described as ‘painterly’ despite choice of technique or material. She works from archival photographs from her parents collection and from her own photographed imagery, focusing on depicting images of friends and parents (and their own friends) as seen, yet maintaining an aspect of the uncanny. Youth culture and nostalgia is a particular running theme in the work she produces, with a focus on portraying house parties and pub scenes.
In this work, This Must Be The Place, Mapplebeck has composed 12 photograph sized drawings together, telling stories of the people, place and time. Some photographic references from which the drawings are derived were taken amongst close friends back at home in Aberdeen, primarily at House parties; others taken during her first term at the Royal College of Art, at pubs with friends and classmates.
