Chloe Medcalf is an illustrator and designer specialising in colourful, joyful and playful queer work. She is currently living in Swansea studying her masters in Illustration at UWTSD and completed her undergraduate degree in Illustration at UWE Bristol in 2022.

Mainly designing digitally on her iPad, Chloe will then transfer her work to a variety of mediums. One of her favourite things about her practice is bringing her work to life through real world applications such as murals, zines, stickers, screenprints, digital embroidery, exquisite corpse books, dress up dolls and life size cut outs.

Using screenprint and risograph printmaking methods allows her to bring her colourful designs to life and add a sense of tactility. Whenever designing something to be produced physically, Chloe often considers the ways in which the pieces can be interacted with. Often drawing inspiration from childhood games and the naivety of being young. She believes that it can be easier and more interesting to educate people on queerness through playful engagement with art. Her inspirations come from a variety of places, including the Art Nouveau, Impressionist and Pre-Raphaelite movements, particularly Alphonse Mucha to vintage packaging, retro surface patterns, flowers and her own fashion style. Safe to say, an art gallery is one of her favourite places to be.

Chloe’s practice mainly involving researching queerness. Previously she has researched queer fashions and how these have evolved throughout history, exploring the fashions from the mid 1800’s to the current day. Inspired by a fascination of how you can often spot a queer person a mile away by how they dress without even asking them if they are queer. She produced a series of work involving life size cut outs, dress up dolls and an exquisite corpse book. The exquisite corpse book was purchased by the Tate Library in 2022 and now resides within their archive.

Currently Chloe is exploring everyday queer life and queer spaces. Through this her work is evolving to be looser and using a greater variety of mark making techniques. In this exploration she is exploring queer archives, ephemera and what it means to be queer to herself. Exploring the similarities and differences between previous queer generations and the current one she aims to create a space to discuss what queer spaces mean.

Exhibitions:
Glynn Vivian Open – Glynn Vivian Art Gallery Swansea, 2026
Queer Am Byth – Sustainable Studio, Cardiff 2024
Neighbourhood, Community Exhibiton – Dyddiau Du, Cardiff, 2023