Amelia Cross blends tailoring and painting, with unique and uncanny results

‘I'm absolutely mad about rules,’ says artist Amelia Cross, sitting at her studiously arranged desk at Sarabande, the foundation set up by designer Lee Alexander McQueen to support a new generation of creatives. Meticulously realised miniature drawn studies of items of clothing or clothing-related details, such as shirt cuffs, reside alongside a pair of feet shaped canvases encased in white lace socks. Cross has been preparing her first UK solo show ‘Rules of Disappearance’ which opens 10 September 2026 at Angelica Jopling’s Incubator – a gallery championing emerging contemporary art voices – and will showcase a new series of her wonderful ‘sewn paintings’.

Prefect, a new work, is laid neatly on the studio floor. It looks like a school uniform that its wearer has literally just stepped out of. Composed of a perfectly pleated skirt that sits just so, the emerald velvet ribbon trim of its jacket exquisitely stitched, while the matching tonally coloured button is, as you lean in, in fact not a real button at all, but a tiny and perfectly painted rendition of one. As buttons go, it’s beguiling. Prefect is a great introduction to Cross; the prefect badge that sits on the jacket’s lapel is also painted and actually reads ‘perfect’. This kind of knowing use of words and trompe-l’œil effects is central to the way Cross wants to invite the viewer to engage and interact with her painstaking, thoughtful work – most pieces, depending on their size, take around five weeks. ‘I like the idea of the double take or second look,’ she says. ‘My work is quite multiangular too, so you do have to move around them.’

Other pieces in the show include a series of 32 small panels featuring a variety of buttons – 31 of which will be painted and one of which will be real; Cross liked spot-the-difference books as a child. One of the largest works, Marketing Graduate, is a painter’s shirt rendered as a biting dig at the idea of what a young artist might have to endure in the ever-volatile and competitive art market; the interior of the collar reads ‘Tailored for Blue Chips’, while its four front pockets are festooned with the typical artistic tools, from oil sticks to scissors. ‘It’s called the Marketing Graduate because that really is what a lot of emerging artists are,’ says Cross in a refreshingly matter-of-fact way. ‘It’s very anti-art.’

Inspired by McQueen learning the craft of tailoring on Saville Row, Cross initially studied bespoke tailoring at London College of Fashion – her degree show featured four looks that riffed on Lucian Freud paintings – before completing a master’s in painting from the Royal College of Art in 2025.

Her initial experiments in oil revolved around paintings of clothing, but with the figure all but removed, leaving perhaps a singular hand amid two beautifully executed shirts. Cross says her creative breakthrough came with the work Neck (Study) in 2024; having observed her own trench coat draped over a chair, she felt inspired to make its collar, followed by painting its buttons and a subtle shadow that you can barely see in a reproduction photograph.

‘I had to almost reject fashion,’ she says. ‘And then get into painting to return to it. My sewing machine and paints had been next to each other for years, but it had never clicked until the RCA.’

Cross tells a wonderfully rudimentary and DIY story of an early art-fashion cross-over; at around 16, inspired by a Miu Miu collection, she drew cats on a school shirt collar. ‘I would use up all the data on my phone to look at runway shows,’ she laughs. But her interest in clothes began with her mother, who she says has always been very well dressed – ‘She always taught us, if you have a good handbag and a good pair of shoes, you can walk into any room, and you'll be fine’ – while her father’s career as a pilot instigated her lifelong curiosity around uniforms.

Comparisons to Domenico Gnoli are obvious – Cross describes the way he painted the twill diagonal line of a tie with a slight shadow as ‘just delicious’. She notes, too, that conceptual artists such as Yoko Ono, Lawrence Weiner and Marcel Duchamp feel pertinent inspirations. ‘Mary Kelly, I think, is really interesting,’ she says. ‘She did a lot with fashion, in almost using clothing as a documentation of a life, and creating an archive. I think, in a way, maybe that's also what I'm trying to do: create a form of an archive.’ Agnes Martin’s rigour and simplicity similarly chime with Cross’ sensibility. ‘You can see it has taken her years to get that perfect stripe, and I think I'm also chasing that perfect button or stripe.’

Painting mostly from life, Cross’ signature greyish beige Belgian linen offers her a certain restraint – ‘It allows the shadows or the form to do the talking.’ Her process begins with a sketch. She will then pattern-cut as if she is making clothing, deciding crucial measurements before cutting the linen, figuring out dimensions for the stretcher bars and which bits of the linen will need to be primed in order to be painted upon. This is followed by the cutting of each individual piece; she will then begin to paint and sew.

Born in London, Cross grew up in Portugal, returning to the UK to study for her GCSEs. She recognises that the shift in school uniform from a very simple polo shirt to the traditional state-school grey skirt with a blazer and tie cemented her fascination with the language and codes of clothing. ‘You’re judged immediately on how exactly you wear your uniform – there’s such an unspoken language around it,’ she recalls of school-era styling nuances. ‘I do like that tension between the idea that a uniform is a way to equalise but somehow also offers a way in to breaking the rules.’ On a first date, she says her initial question is always ‘What was your school uniform and how did you wear it?’

For a recent show at Nino Mier Gallery in New York, Cross completed extensive archival research into uniforms, specifically school dress codes and workplace attire at both the V&A and the Goldsmith’s Textile Collection. On a board in her studio, there are images of men wearing plus fours from the 1920s, including Cambridge undergraduates. Inspiration is also gathered from real life, specifically on her Northern Line commute. ‘I like to look back, but also look at what people are wearing now because that makes for a new language.’ One of her favourites among this latest work is Sardines, featuring four almost identical navy suit-jacketed arms, which was largely informed by journeying bankers and the varying iterations on a classic navy sartorial uniform.

For those who invest in Cross’ work, they may find a secondary element in addition to the painting itself in the form of some kind of correspondence from the artist. Secret messages, confessional ideas and writings circulate her practice – perhaps another way to keep the audience alert, engaged, looking. For her New York show, Cross made a work called The Price of Privacy, consisting of a small pocket detail and a partly concealed confessional letter detailing the artist’s own sins of the past year. After it sold, she sent the full letter to the buyer – as yet with no response. ‘But that’s part of it,’ she grins. ‘In my mind, I thought they could post it online or maybe just keep it for themselves… I like that these added elements aren’t obvious straight away,’ she says. ‘My work allows me to play, but also to mess with people a little bit.’

Amelia Cross, ‘Rules For Disappearance’, 10 September – 4 October 2026 at Incubator, London, incubatorart.com