Anna Freeman Bentley (b. 1982) is an artist based in London. Her painting practice explores unpeopled architecture and interiors, the objects, decoration and furniture inviting both narrative and abstruser consideration. This publication, Complete Reality, documents Freeman Bentley’s latest series of paintings, which she created after visiting the film set for My Driver & I (2024), a coming-of-age drama set in the port city of Jeddah in Saudi Arabia. The paintings show lavish rooms, filled with fringed lamps, dusty chandeliers, vast mirrors and ornate furniture, juxtaposed with the incongruous signs of a film set: leads, computers and plastic chairs. Mining the relationship between ‘reality’ and ‘fabrication’, the series continues the artist’s interest in spaces that have an inherent tension or transience.

Alongside the paintings, the publication also includes installation images of the artist’s most recent solo exhibitions – Video Village at MASSIMODECARLO Pièce Unique, Paris (2024), make shift at Monica de Cardenas, Zuoz (2024), and Complete Reality at Anat Ebgi, Los Angeles (2024–25) – showcasing the works staged in different configurations and gallery environments. In her introduction, Jennifer Higgie considers the interiority of Freeman Bentley’s elusive scenes, and her interest in temporary and unreal spaces. The curator and writer Elisabetta Fabrizi interviews Freeman Bentley about the interplay of reality and illusion in her paintings. Kathryn Lloyd writes about the conceptual and historical relationships between cinema, photography and painting. In an interview with Michele Robecchi, the artist discusses her recent solo exhibition in Switzerland, make shift. In her contribution, film producer Georgie Paget offers a speculative film script based on Video Village, the exhibition that Freeman Bentley staged at MASSIMODECARLO Pièce Unique.

Freeman Bentley studied Painting at Chelsea College of Art, Kunsthochschule Berlin Weissensee and the Royal College of Art. Selected exhibitions (*solo) include Lyndsey Ingram, London, 2024; GRIMM Gallery, Amsterdam, 2023; Frestonian Gallery, London, 2020* and 2022*; DENK Gallery, Los Angeles, 2019*, Ahmanson Gallery, Irvine, 2018*; Space K, Seoul, 2017; MAC Birmingham, 2011; Prague Biennale, 2011, and the Bloomberg New Contemporaries, 2009. Her work is part of the Tia Collection, Santa Fe; Museum X, Beijing; Hotel Crillon collection, Paris; Hogan Lovells Collection, London; the Ahmanson Collection, California, and private collections worldwide.