Chantal Joffe @ Victoria Miro

The exhibition includes a number of new paintings of the artist’s mother, Daryll, part of an ongoing series that Chantal Joffe began some three decades ago. These works, some painted from family photographs, others from life, range back and forth in time. The Story of the title refers to a painting depicting the artist and her two sisters as children in the early 1970s, snuggled up on a sofa with their mother as they share a bedtime story. Other paintings show Daryll now, alone – standing in her doorway, reclining on a sofa after a cataract operation – or accompanied by Chantal.   The shifts in dynamic are as much emotional and psychological as they are physical, but no less palpable.