Lorraine Thomas was born in Paris in 1964, she works and lives in Marseille. Lorraine THOMAS grew up in Paris in a modernist environment; my parents were architect-urbanists. Immersed in plans and sections, tracing paper and models, she developed from a very young age a particular way of approaching ideas and forms, including every part of her surroundings in a broader and more holistic vision. Her Lorraine father built his projects with complete rationality, while on her Polish mother’s side, depressive, impulsive, and illogical, it was difficult to distinguish true from false! Lorraine went on to study architecture at the Beaux-Arts in Paris following in her parents’ footsteps but fell into a long depression. Her encounter with the world of contemporary art occurred later in London, where in 2015 she obtained a Master’s in Plastic Arts from the City & Guilds of London Art School.
Following this, she is offered an interview by the magazine ‘Floor Magazine’. After obtaining her diploma, she is offered an interview by the magazine ‘Floor Magazine’, her work is exhibited at the Turps Gallery, Charlie Smith London, the Griffin Gallery ASC Gallery, and at the Red Door Project Space. In October 2016, she opens a new contemporary art space, Pipeline West, in Putney in the former premises of Roger Waters of Pink Floyd. She runs the space with video artist James Tabbush, with whom she continues to collaborate. In March 2017, her work is highly recommended by Iona Blawick, director of the Whitechapel Gallery. In November 2017, Lorraine Thomas creates a new installation, The Meeting of Art and Life, in a laundromat in South London, an intervention associated with the artistic and curatorial project Inside-Out, conceived by students from St Martins School and the Russian curator Olga Pogasova. This will be followed by a solo exhibition The Line of Flight at the Red Door Project Space in South Kensington. In July 2018, Lorraine won the Collyer Bristow Cash Award with a new installation The Map of the Cemetery and Climbing Wall. Her work was noticed by the professor of the British School of Art in Rome, Jacopo Benci, and in October 2018 she was invited to Rome to meet the artist Gianfranco Barucello, a close associate of Marcel Duchamp.
Brexit, a Divorce, is a ‘double exit’ and Lorraine leaves London in the spring of 2019 to settle in Marseille.
In October 2019, she created Emprise, a ‘mixed’ space comprising her studio, her living space, and an exhibition hall. In August 2020, she participated in the Artists’ Studio Openings (OAA) and presented her work to the Marseille public for the first time. She organizes workshops within Emprise for the children of her neighborhood and creates a collective work: the Palimpsest, a memory wall of the studio. A collaborative project with filmmaker James Tabbush was produced in London during the summer of 2020 along with the repatriation of the sculptural object Charrette. The resulting exhibition Être Charrette is part of the program of the Spring of Contemporary Art. PAC 2020, Marseille. In March 2021, Lorraine had a one-month residency at ArteVentura, near Seville. In May 2021, her project You See the Sea – I Think of the Sky; an installation at the historic site of the Chapel of Our Lady of the Sailors in Martigues, was selected as part of the off-site proposals of the Printemps de l’Art Contemporain; PAC 2021; Marseille. In September 2022, Lorraine reactivated Charrette with a presentation of the object at Parc Longchamp as part of Heritage Days in Marseille. The ArtUmbria gallery has represented her work in Amsterdam since the summer of 2022. The year 2023 was mainly devoted to the proposal Give Us Some Money?!. The machine-paintings were exhibited at the Galerie du Tableau, in Marseille in October 2023. In August 2023, a selection of her drawings and collages were exhibited by Joël Yvon, former director of the Red District gallery, Marseille. In December 2023, she is invited by Galerie MundArt and Galerie La Nave Va as part of their end-of-year group exhibitions. In August 2023, Lorraine received studio development assistance (AIA) from the DRAC and created a storage space capable of containing and protecting her works. She will participate in PAC OFF 2024 by presenting L’envers du miroir at Galerie Emprise, an exhibition that will be followed by a proposal from Jean Feline, who in turn invites her to exhibit in October at the Espace Projet Feria he manages in Belsunce, Marseille. Her future projects include an in situ installation of the work “Donnez nous des sous!?” at the Franklin Salon in Marseille and an exhibition of “tomb paintings” in the crypts of the Abbaye Saint Victor.