Anna Bjerger’s paintings are all sourced from photographs. These images are recognisable photos of family days out, landscapes taken on holiday, friends at a party. Once she selects an image she brings out certain elements by editing, emphasizing or cropping. The final paintings may seem familiar but the viewer remains dislocated from the narratives the photographs may have once contained.

Bjerger’s work is influenced by Edvard Munch, Luc Tuymans and Alex Katz. Her work is small-scale, up to 30 x 42 cm, and she often works in series. Nice People and Places is a group of paintings based on an empty address book that she found. She decided to fill it with images of people and places that she knew or found. Poses is another group of images of people posing for the camera – often awkward, rarely themselves. For her show at MW projects Bjerger is painting a series entitled White Paintings.

White Painting is often associated with a particular period of Modernist painting. The paintings of Robert Ryman made during the post-war period of 1950 – 65 seem to represent an emptying out of all content in order to achieve a purity of expression and formalism. Introducing figurative elements to the idea of the white painting allows a dialogue to emerge between style and content that opens up other possibilities for interpretation.

The paintings are derived from snapshots, both personal and found. A snapshot has its own purity in that it is free of any artistic intention and is meant to record a personal memory. These images are both generic and specific in their recording of memories, inviting a response that functions on both levels.

During the process of selecting and painting the images a pattern emerges that will  dictate the direction of the work. Whiteness can be the detail that stands out and makes the image unforgettable. It could be a preconceived idea of something white that bears little resemblance to it in reality once it is hit by light or dirt. There is a white that has an unforgiving, piercing quality to it and a white that invites light and other colours to play on its surface. The ambition of the paintings is to speak of these subtleties.

Bjerger graduated from the Royal College of Art last year. Since leaving college she has been included in group shows in Italy, Germany, Sweden and London, where she is currently showing in another group show called Love. White Paintings at MW projects will be her first solo show in London.