Dr Tamara Tolley has worked professionally as an artist since 2017. She is a graduate of St Anne’s College, Oxford where she read for a BA (Juris), and later returned for her D.Phil. She originally worked as an academic at Queen Mary, University of London and then the University of Southampton.
Eileen Cooper RA once described Tamara as “the Barbican artist”. For thirteen years, the subject of her paintings and writings focused on her life as an artist on the Barbican Estate, and specifically the experience of living within a Brutalist landscape.
Tamara has had four solo exhibitions, two at the Barbican Centre’s Library Art Gallery respectively entitled Tamara Tolley: At Home on the Barbican Estate and The Poetry of Brutalism (also the title of a recent book by the author published by Asemic Press).
Her third solo show, Silk Road Garden Travels was at The Art Space at Cass Art, Islington inspired by her imaginary travels during the pandemic.
Her fourth solo exhibition, Sumi: A Path Through Abstraction was at the Mary Olgilvie Building, St Anne’s College, Oxford University (her alma mater).
Tamara’s work has been exhibited and sold at Royal Academy Summer Exhibitions in 2017 and 2021. Her work has appeared on a Royal Academy video and publication “Where Artists Work”, featuring her on her Barbican balcony studio. She has lectured on her work at the Barbican Centre Library and at the Survivors’ Centre in London. Her artwork has been included in the Barbican Centre’s online platforms and City of London Libraries’ website. Interviews with her have been published in the Barbican Residents’ magazine and in Basalt, by Lyndon Watkinson, Wiro Mag Press.
She has exhibited at Bankside Gallery, Royal Watercolour Society Opens where she has won the Cass Art Award and been the “Judge’s Choice” (gallerist Kristian Day).
Tamara has participated in various group shows in London, Birmingham, Sheffield and Athens. She is a member of HGSA (Hampstead Garden Suburb Artists) and is currently exhibiting for the third time this year in their Afterlight Art Group Show November 1st-December 2nd 2026, Fellowship House, London.
Her work is in private collections in Sweden, Canada, Hong Kong, Ireland and in the UK, in London, Oxford and Cambridge, and some of her brutally inspired landscapes are amongst the private collections of residents of the Barbican Estate and the City of London.
Her body of sumi ink works initially contributed to Project Scotland’s “100 Days”. Tamara has also written about her Sumi practice in an online art magazine “At Haus-Arrest”. She has also taught her method online both to fellow art professionals and amateur artists. She is involved in an ongoing project on Synaesthesia as well as Brutalism which draws on her experience living and working on the Barbican Estate.
Tamara has published The Poetry of Brutalism (published by Asemic Press 2025) and has a forthcoming book entitled The Spirit of Sumi (Asemic Press 2027).