About the Artist | Moira Cameron
Moira Cameron was born in London to a family of artists. Her father was the celebrated figurative sculptor Ronald Cameron (1930-2013). Her mother, Dorothy Cameron, was a sculptor in her own right. Half a century earlier, Dorothy’s mother had been among the first women to attend art school.
Cameron earned a BA (Fine Art) from Ravensbourne College of Art and an MFA from Chelsea College of Art. In the 1980s, she and her husband, artist David Spiller (1942-2018), moved to New York City. Amidst the bustling streets and graffiti-fueled art scene, Cameron began experimenting with paper sacks as a medium for her artwork. Sourced from her daily life and travels, then cut, patched, glued, and stenciled into something new, the shopping bags are both imbued with personal memories and more broadly representative of the signs, symbols, and sayings of 1980s and 1990s popular culture. Cameron managed her husband’s studio for decades after, and only after he passed away, did she pick up the paint brush again. First, with their son (as Spiller + Cameron) and as of 2024, she returned to the canvas alone. This marks Cameron’s new beginning.
Cameron’s figurative self-portrait, A Life Lived, won the National Portrait Gallery’s Herbert Smith Freehills Kramer Portrait Award in July 2025, chosen from 1,300 international submissions. As of this catalog’s publication, it remains on exhibition at London’s National Portrait Gallery.