Paintings of night swimming by Corn Shuk Mei Ho hide human emotions under the surface

Now the London-based artist is back with an exhibition featuring five new artworks on the same theme, but with a timely focus. On show at D Contemporary Gallery from 28 September, the characters in Night Swims 2020 reflect feelings of isolation, solitude, uncertainty, and fear – emotional states that have sadly been familiar to many of us over the last six months.

The reflections dancing off the dark water's surface are a symbolic description of these hidden emotions – as though everything on the surface is ok, but really, they are not. They mirror the feelings of the men and women she depicts as if they were nocturnal animals that are only comfortable to feed and hunt in the dark.

Corn Shuk Mei Ho graduated with an MFA from University of Arts London, Wimbledon College of Arts in 2016, and has a BA in fine arts and french studies from the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Since graduating, her works have been exhibited in the UK and Hong Kong.

"I set out to explore the deepest levels of the human subconscious," she says. "The atmospheric, melancholy tones of my drawings and paintings evoke sensations of dislocation. These works document my interest in what is lost and what is found, the ambivalence between what is the fleeting memory and what is synthesized as a trace within the landscape."