Issy Grew’s exhibition, ‘Somewhere I’d Rather Be’, explores the conflicts of comfort and desire through her compelling and honest oil paintings, drawings and ceramics. This exhibition is made by surveying archival imagery of home photography both personal and sourced second-hand, providing the opportunity to linger within unfamiliar memories. Through her meaningful motifs and recurring imagery, she reminisces on a naivety, innocence and freedom of childhood. These hazy memories are documented by film photography that hold the comfort of a warm summer hue. This calming hue is emphasized through a saturation of colour, that she mirrors in her chosen palette. By recreating photographs, the moment and connection that once existed between figures and the architecture or landscape, is mimicked. Through selection, cropping and collage, a new idealistic family album is created. ​ Blurred details of figures, un-welcoming body language and subtle awkward compositions found in Grew’s fictional snapshots ensures that the viewer becomes an intruder to these intimate projections of day-to-day life. The calmness of her paintings allows the viewer time to notice the documented non-verbal cues that express authentic desires stronger than verbal messages. The secretiveness within her paintings, due to limited details and the manipulated truths, displays the complex relationship between the desire to seek relationships yet the coinciding anxieties surrounding rejection. ​ The exhibition title Somewhere I’d Rather Be explores ideas of escapism, a running theme through Grew’s work. As a process, creating through multiple mediums provides a form of escapism. She savours and prolongs the lengthy process of time and labour that is permitted to produce her work. While creating, she projects herself into these idealistic environments. Therefore, her paintings and drawings become distanced extensions of herself that she desires to be surrounded by. Her intimate fictional imagery that transforms into an idealistic family album is used as a tool to reinvent the past.