The exhibition catalogue can be downloaded here - it contains an important essay on Jemima’s work by Dr Kayleigh Perkov

Text below by LAMAG curator Hugo Cervantes:

Pattern is a visual strategy capable of dazzling, disorienting, and obscuring. Animals across species wield it masterfully, using it to navigate their environments and protect themselves. Humans follow suit, creating and deploying patterns for both utilitarian and conceptual purposes—often always sharing a close intimacy with military technologies. These tensions underlining the history of pattern animate the artist Jemima Wyman’s approach to pattern. She hijacks and syntheses patterns from both the natural and human world, highlighting international social movements with a focus on environmental protests. Meticiously she combs through photos of environmental protests identifying and siloing patterns and markings to layer, double, and emmesh, with one another to conjure a new pattern-oriented visual system. A proud maximalist, she imposes one pattern atop another, creating dense, immersive surfaces that radiate energy while offering an accessible entry point for viewers to engage with the political contexts of each protest.These hyper-pattern compositions form the foundation of Wyman’s visual language, which spans sculpture, textile, collage, photography, and installation. Her practice is driven by juxtaposition, repetition, and contrast, qualities inherent to her hyper-patterns.

Central to her visual language is Wyman’s citational practice that lists every protest that she draws imagery for her hyper-patterns. This quiet yet incisive intervention manifests itself within the titles of the artworks, transforming them into records of collective action. For example, in Rise and Fall and rise... she cites over 16 protests with the earliest dating in 2011, “Walk for the Future” in Durban, South Africa, where activists demanded leaders at the COP17 conference to take action on climate justice; and to the latest cited protest being 2025’s “March to Save the Sea” in Santa Monica, California, where civilians and activists marched to demand government action to clean up toxic debris related to this year's Palisades, Eaton, Hughes, and so on, from the polluting Los Angeles County’s coastline. Her citational practice is thoughtful and generous, noting the differences between artists, activists, and social movements, while emphasizing how artistic involvement is critical for social movements and vice versa.

All photo credits are Ed Mumford (except for the 9th installation image its Courtesy of the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery, Photo Credit: Brian Jones)