An Ode to Orlando: Pi Artworks, London

Ada Interiors

 

 

Curated by Marcelle Joseph

 

Pi Artworks

55 Eastcastle Street

London W1W 8EG

 

‘I’m sick to death of this particular self. I want another.’

 

‘For she had a great variety of selves to call upon, far more than we have been able to find room for, since a biography is considered complete if it merely accounts for six or seven selves, whereas a person may have many thousand…and these selves of which we are built up, one on top of the other, as plates are piled on a waiter’s hand, have attachments elsewhere, sympathies, little constitutions and rights of their own…and some are too wildly ridiculous to be mentioned in print at all.’

 

Orlando, Virginia Woolf  (1928)

 

Pi Artworks proudly presents An Ode to Orlando, an expansive group exhibition curated by Marcelle Joseph, featuring a cross-generational and international group of artists alongside the inaugural collection of furniture designs by Ada Interiors. The exhibition reimagines the gallery space as the private home of a fictional art collector set in London in the present day. Based on Virginia Woolf’s Orlando, this particular aesthete – a passionate, brilliant and eccentric character who lives and breathes art - navigates fluidly through time and gender, au courant with the latest cultural trends and equally in tune with the past. Creating a dialogue between contemporary art and artisanal furniture, the exhibition is divided into two areas: a drawing room and a study, representing the twin selves of Orlando as both a man and a woman. Orlando’s reimagined London residence will be a place of sanctuary and escape, a site that is beyond time as Woolf’s Orlando lives for more than 300 years into modern times without ageing perceptibly. Here, we are forever young.

 

The furniture designs by Ada Interiors, stem from an appreciation of place, and the heritage of a family where lines are never drawn between art, literature, design and architecture. The founders of this new design house were empowered by the stories of generations of antecedents who were artists, designers, artisan fabric-makers, and often all three. In this exhibition, the story continues, celebrating the interaction and interpretation of materials in both art and design, as well as an attempt to fashion a visual text of sorts – possibly the magnus opus that Orlando was never able to finish writing in Virginia Woolf’s novel. From Charlie Billingham’s lustrous woven tapestry hanging on the wall to the hand-blown glass sculpture by Gabriele Beveridge, and from the cascading draped fabrics adorning fashion designer Richard Malone’s figurative sculpture to Freud-meets-Feminism ceramic ashtrays by Holly Stevenson on top of the Golden Siggiedesk, the art forms in this exhibition vacillate between art and design mediums to weave together a tale of an extraordinary art collector who does not live in any particular period of time - past, present or future - but instead an individual of indeterminate gender and impeccable taste who makes their own worlds come to life within the four walls of their domestic space. Filled with masterpieces collected over the years by artists and designers who have filled the connoisseur’s home with laughter, debate and witty repartee, this ‘Orlando’ collects stories and conversations they have had with artists and designers as much as they collect actual art and design objects, building up a treasure trove of life experiences that ‘Orlando’ must commit to pen and paper before this priceless archive is lost to failing memory. 

 

Woolf writes of Orlando that ‘she had a great variety of selves to call upon’ and ‘Orlando’s taste was broad; he was no lover of garden flowers only; the wild and the weeds even had always a fascination for him’. Here, Orlando can indulge their many selves and tastes through the images depicted on their walls, whether it be a dreamy abstract painting by Pam Evelyn that the viewer can get lost within for hours or the atmospheric painting by Antonia Showering that transports the viewer to its idyllic landscape setting. Jonathan Baldock’s ceramic masks smile or wink back from the wall with their cheeky expressions, leaving the viewer begging to know what tidbit of juicy gossip they just heard, while Annie Morris’s vibrantly hued stack sculpture stands regal beside Ada Interiors’ furniture with design inspiration coming from late Georgian, Vienna Secession, Bauhaus and Mid-Century Modern furniture. Visitors may be compelled to stroke the lusciously glazed fantastical yet introspective vases by Lindsey Mendick. Equally, Glen Pudvine’s large scale painting hanging above Orlando’s desk in the study gives the viewer a lot to ponder with a tapir on the African savannah using his enormous prehensile male member to grip the same organ of the artist as depicted in a nude self-portrait.  

 

The desire for other selves runs throughout this exhibition just as Orlando desired to be a poet who could be as at home in a working-class public house as the court of Queen Elizabeth I. But Orlando’s own home was their true sanctuary and place of escape where fantasies could be spun into reality with just a glance onto their walls from the comfort of a gorgeously upholstered chair.

 

Many thanks to Maryam Eisler, The Estate of Maeve Gilmore, Emma Robertson and Jake Miller, Karen and Mark Smith, Marcelle Joseph and Nelson Woo for the loans of their artworks to this exhibition. 

 

ARTIST BIOGRAPHIES

 

London-based British artist Jonathan Baldock (b. 1980, Kent, UK) works across multiple platforms including sculpture, installation and performance. He graduated from Winchester School of Art with a BA in Painting (2000-2003), followed by the Royal College of Art, London with an MA in Painting (2003-2005). Baldock’s work is saturated with humour and wit, as well as an uncanny, macabre quality that channels his long-standing interest in myth and folklore. He has an ongoing focus on the contrast between the material qualities of ceramic and fabric in his work. Concerned with removing the functional aspects of the materials he uses, Baldock instead works in a performative way through his sculptural assemblages, bringing the viewer, the object and the space they simultaneously occupy into question as a theatrical or ritualistic act. Recent solo exhibitions include those at La Casa Encendida, Madrid (2021); Accelerator, Stockholm (2021); Kunsthall Stavanger, Norway (2020); Stephen Friedman Gallery, London (2019); Fitzrovia Chapel, London (2019); a touring exhibition to Bluecoat, Liverpool (2020), Camden Arts Centre, London (2019) and Tramway, Glasgow (2019); Southwark Park Galleries, London (2017). Baldock’s work was included in the inaugural Towner International Biennial at Towner Art Gallery, Eastbourne, UK in October 2020. Baldock’s work recently entered the Arts Council Collection, UK. He is represented by Stephen Friedman Gallery, London.

 

Gabriele Beveridge (b. 1985, Hong Kong) lives and works in London. She employs materials in her artistic practice that frequently derive from sites of commerce, particularly those where we prepare and process our bodies, or more accurately where we pay others to perform labour on our surfaces. Display and presentation are persistent themes throughout the practice. Beveridge includes found photographic imagery, cropped posters and promotional material found in hair and nail salons, alongside photograms, glass and other natural materials. Recent solo and two person exhibitions include: Great Pretender, Kai Art Center, Tallinn (2021); Live Dead World, Seventeen, London (2018-19); Soft Shrinking Tremor, Bradley Ertaskiran, Montreal (2017); Eternity Anyways, Chewday’s, London (2016); Mainland, MOT, Brussels (2015); Health and Strength, La Salle de Bains, Lyon (2015); and Gold Diamond Park, Elizabeth Dee, New York (2014). She is represented by Seventeen, London.

 

British artist Charlie Billingham (b. 1984, London) lives and works in London. Through a range of subjects usually rooted in history and tradition, Billingham’s practice simultaneously honors and questions painting and its legacy. Accordingly, he looks to personal and shared experiences as a source for his visual concepts. His imagery often derives from satirical prints of the late 18th and early 19th century, now redefined by a 21st century appropriation. He completed his joint honors MA at the University of Edinburgh and Edinburgh College of Art in 2008, and received a postgraduate degree from the Royal Academy Schools, London, in 2013. Recent solo exhibitions include: Hand Gestures, Travesía Cuatro, Guadalajara, Mexico (2021); A Rake’s Progress, SCAD Museum of Art, Savannah, Georgia (2020); Cornucopia, MAZ Museo de Arte de Zapopan, Mexico (2019); A Well Deserved Break, Park House, Dallas, Texas (2019); Desire Path at Travesía Cuatro, Madrid (2017); and Charlie Billingham at Independent Régence presented by Supportico Lopez, Brussels (2017). His work has been included in several group exhibitions, such as Crowd, Hannah Barry Gallery, London (2020); Les Métamorphoses. Jeunes Artistes en Europe, curated by Thomas Delamarre at Fondation Cartier, Paris (2019); Objects to Identify, Morán Morán, Los Angeles (2018); Absolute Éructance, with Charlie Billingham and Nils Alix-Tabeling, Damien & the Love Guru, Brussels (2017); Plant Scenery of the World, Inverleith House, Edinburgh (2017); and The Coverly Set, Sargent’s Daughters, New York (2017). He is represented by Travesía Cuatro, Madrid and Guadalajara and Morán Morán, Los Angeles.

 

British artist Victoria Cantons (b.1969, London) lives and works in London. Her multidisciplinary practice is primarily shaped by her multi-national, cultural and religious background, the work is confessional with political undercurrents, exploring the language of identity, self and representation, and allows Cantons to point attention towards the dialogue between painting, in and of itself, what it’s doing now, and its history. Cantons’ work investigates themes of interpersonal relationships and mental health. She is interested in the dialogue between painting’s contemporary iterations and its histories using a range of mediums, including drawing, writing and photography, to navigate between intuitive, intellectual, and aesthetic content. In 2021, she completed an MFA at Slade School of Art, London, after graduating with a BA from Wimbledon College of Art, London. Cantons studied Drama for The Stage and Screen at the Academy of Live and Recorded Arts (ALRA South) from 1995-1997. She received the Felix Slade Scholarship in 2018 and was shortlisted for the Chadwell Award in 2021. Her work has featured in recent solo and duo exhibitions at Studio West, London (with Xu Yang) (2021); Cuturi Gallery, Singapore (with Marla Bendini) (2021); and Guts Gallery, London (2020). Recent selected group exhibitions include: Cedric Bardawil at Cromwell Place, London (2021); Flowers Gallery, London (2021); Royal Academy of Art (2020); Nicodim Gallery, Los Angeles (2020); and White Cube, London (2020). In both 2020 and 2021, Cantons curated the Slade Graduate showcase as a part of London Grads Now at Saatchi Gallery, London.

 

Eileen Cooper is a respected British artist known for her strong and passionate commitment to figuration. Her richly diverse images, simultaneously bold and tender, reveal a range of feeling that is both deeply engrossing and readily accessible, yet still very much part of contemporary art practice. Throughout her career, Cooper’s work has contained a strong autobiographical element. However, her vision is always more allegorical than anecdotal, her concerns and experiences as relevant and timeless as those of the human spirit itself. Studying first at Goldsmiths College (1971-74) and then at the Royal College of Art (1974-77), she went on to teach at a wide range of art schools including St Martin’s, the Royal College of Art, City & Guilds in London and latterly at the Royal Academy of Arts. In 2000, she was elected a Royal Academician. From 2010-17, Cooper served as Keeper of the Royal Academy, one of only four officers selected from the 80 Royal Academicians, and with primary responsibility for the Royal Academy Schools, thereby becoming the first woman to be elected to this role since the RA began in 1768. Originally from the Peak District, Cooper has exhibited widely in the UK and internationally. Her work is held in many public and private collections such as the Arts Council Collection; the British Museum; National Portrait Gallery, London; Manchester Art Gallery; Mima, Middlesborough; New Hall Art Collection, University of Cambridge; the Royal Collection; Victoria & Albert Museum; Dallas Museum of Art, Texas; Kunsthalle, Nuremberg; and Walpole Library, Yale University. She was made an Officer of the British Empire (OBE) for services to Art and Art Education in 2016. 

 

Sarah Dwyer is an Irish artist, raised in Ireland and the UK and working in London. Her practice makes space for exploring image and form through the iterative nature of storytelling. Punchy exuberant re-imaginations of her familial surroundings and bodily forms are excavated with a somewhat mischievous and subversive approach to painting, drawing, printmaking and experimental sculptures. Dwyer studied painting and printmaking in Paris after completing a degree in Environmental Economics at York University. She has a Masters in Fine Art from Staffordshire University and a Master’s in Painting from the Royal College of Art, London. Sarah has exhibited internationally in the USA, Europe and Japan, also curating several exhibitions in the UK. She has works in private and public collections in both Europe, the USA and Japan. Recent solo exhibitions include those at Unit 1 Gallery Workshop, London (2020); Jane Lombard Gallery, New York (2019 and 2015); and Josh Lilley Gallery, London (2014, 2012 and 2009). Selected group exhibitions include The Human Scale, Rochester Art Centre, Minneapolis (2021); A Generous Space, Hastings Contemporary, Hastings, UK (2021); Reigen, Fabian Lang, Zurich (2021); Penumbra, F.E McWilliam Museum, Northern Ireland (2020); Stains on a Decade, Josh Lilley Gallery, London (2019); The John Moores Painting Prize, Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool (2016); New Order: British Art Today, Saatchi Gallery, London (2014). She is represented by Josh Lilley Gallery, London.

 

Pam Evelyn (b. 1996, Guildford, UK) lives and works in London. Using a process where the outcome is dependent on physical application rather than aesthetic decision making, Evelyn’s focus is to paint acting from impulse, chance or frustration, creating different tensions across the canvas surface that enable her to produce a kind of organised chaos in paint. Her drips, streaks and smudges form a palimpsestic surface where the marks have the capacity to evoke material sensations without lingering on a particular name or fixed meaning and may appear as non-representational forms as well as become visible as more recognisable suggestions of figuration and landscape. Exhibitions include: a forthcoming solo exhibition at The Approach (2022); Spectacle of a wreck, Peres Projects, Berlin (2021);  Le Coeur Encore, The Approach, London (2021); Diaries Of A Climate, Baert Gallery, Los Angeles (2021); Up Up and Away, Hockney Gallery, London (2020); Bad Actors, Karst Gallery, Plymouth; Set the Borders on Fire, Exhibition Laboratory, Helsinki; A Myth, Amorph, A Method, Althuis Hofland Fine Arts Amsterdam (all 2019) and Olio, The Crypt Gallery, London (2017). She is currently studying Fine Art Painting at The Royal College of Art, London after graduating from the Slade School of Art, London with a BFA (First Class Honours) in 2019. She is represented by The Approach, London.

 

Maeve Gilmore (1917-1983) was a British painter, writer, illustrator and textile artist. Her paintings range from assured early portraits, to more exploratory narrative and semi-abstract works produced later in her career. Whilst Gilmore’s early work reflects a Euston Road School influence, also evident is a brand of romanticism reminiscent of the Neo-Romantics, such as Piper and Ayrton. Between 1935 and 1937 (the year of her marriage to writer and artist Mervyn Peake), Gilmore travelled and studied in mainland Europe, where she saw at first hand key works of modernism and the avant garde. She was greatly inspired by the 1937 Paris Exhibition, where she saw Calder’s Mercury Fountain, Miro’s Catalan Peasant in Revolt and Picasso Guernica. Subsequently she began to take on the influence of European surrealism and abstraction, in paintings in which the figure remained her central concern. Much of her work is autobiographical, depicting the domesticity of family life and events from a keenly feminine perspective, in imagery that is often surreal and dreamlike. As her husband’s health declined, Gilmore’s secular imagery gave way to a more spiritually-inspired gesture and economy of means. After his death in 1968 she found renewed artistic expression, and this is arguably when she produced much of her best work. At the same time she worked to preserve Peake’s legacy, and his status today is partly attributable to Gilmore’s efforts. Viewed from both feminist and art historical perspectives, one can position Gilmore’s work in a context that might also include such notable artists as Leonora Carrington, Eileen Agar, Ithell Colquhoun, and Vanessa Bell. Her story is in part a familiar one; that of a woman artist struggling to forge her own artistic career whilst often finding her reputation subsumed or overshadowed by that of a male artist. There are highly distinctive qualities in Gilmore’s work, both stylistically and thematically, which make her worthy of reassessment as an important British artist of her period.

 

Natalia Gonzalez-Martin (b. 1995, Spain) lives and works in London after completing her degree in Fine Art Painting at City & Guilds, London in 2017.  Borrowing the formal qualities of icon painting, Gonzalez-Martin’s work explores the inscriptions of a cultural heritage on one’s physical body and moral codes. Placed in a bucolic setting, the figures represented are are filled with historic symbolism, allowing us to pay attention to the traditions, gestures and habits we have inherited. Her work merges the characters from old fables with the constant supply of images we are subjected to daily, aiming to blur the boundaries between the divine and the secular in order to gesture towards other ways of desiring, feeling or being in the world. Recent solo and duo exhibitions include those at Steve Turner, Los Angeles (2022); Galerie Sébastien Bertrand, Geneva, CH (2021); and Quench Gallery, Margate, UK (2021). Her work was featured in the following selected group exhibitions: A New Artworld, Guts Gallery, London (2021); Bathing Nervous Limbs, Arusha Gallery, Edinburgh (2021); Les Danses Nocturnes, East Contemporary, Entrevaux, FR; Old Friends, New Friends, Collective Ending, London (2021); and Frozen Time, Annarumma Gallery, Naples, IT (2020). She is represented by Galerie Sébastien Bertrand, Geneva, CH.

 

Mustafa Hulusi (b. 1971, London, UK), lives and works in London and Cyprus. Hulusi mines his hybrid identity - he was born in London to Turkish-Cypriot parents - to create evocative paintings, installations, films, and photographs. By combining diverse artistic styles and both Middle Eastern and Western art historical references, with a nod to pop culture and mass media, Hulusi investigates how different visual 'languages' shape our perception. His work often investigates the traditional conflation of abstraction and representation in Islamic art and questions how this combination of styles affects viewer perception. The artist received his BA in Fine Art and Critical Studies from Goldsmiths College, London and his MA in Photography from the Royal College of Art, London.  He also holds an MA in Critical Theory from Central St. Martin’s School of Art, London. He has exhibited widely in Europe and the United States, and more recently in Asia. Mustafa Hulusi represented the Republic of Cyprus at the 52nd International Art Exhibition of Venice Biennale in 2007. Mustafa Hulusi’s work has been included in exhibitions at the Whitechapel Gallery, London; the Saatchi Gallery, London;  Sean Kelly Gallery, New York; Baibakov Art Projects, Moscow; the Stedelijk Museum Bureau, Amsterdam; BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead, UK; MoMA PS1,  New York and KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin. He is represented by Pi Artworks, London and Istanbul.

 

Richard Malone (b. 1991, Wexford, Ireland) is a London-based, Irish-born multi-disciplinary artist and designer. Malone graduated from Central Saint Martins in 2014, winning both the Deutsche Bank Award and the LVMH Grand Prix Scholarship for his fashion collection. Malone’s collections have been supported by Fashion East and the British Fashion Council's NEWGEN schemes and shown in venues ranging from working members clubs to the Tate Britain and alongside the Raphael cartoons at the Victoria and Albert Museum. In February 2020, Malone was named the winner of the International Woolmark Prize, previously awarded to Karl Lagerfeld and Yves Saint Laurent. As a staunch advocate for women’s rights, Malone produces his collections in strictly limited editions or completely unique pieces. Malone is strongly against the mass production involved in the fashion industry, and much of his work is fabricated from existing or waste produce. As well as his bi-annual shows at London Fashion Week, Malone’s work extends to sculpture, performance and furniture. In 2021, Malone was the first artist invited to show at Eileen Gray’s E.1027 Villa in Roqueburne, France. Malone curated and directed the project Making and Momentum : In Conversation with Eileen Gray, bringing together some of Ireland’s leading practitioners and makers to celebrate the enduring legacy of radical modernism in Ireland. The show travelled to the National Museum in Dublin and will finish in 2022 in Malone and Gray’s hometown, Wexford in Ireland. In 2017, Malone was part of the Museum of Modern Art in New York's first fashion exhibition in more than 60 years, entitled Is Fashion Modern?. Following the show, Malone became one of the youngest artists in history to be added to the museum's permanent collection, and his work was also shown at MoMA at the exhibition Energy (2019-20) as well as the museum’s permanent collection rehang. His work has featured in other group exhibitions, including: Song of Songs, Unit London, London (2021); Desire: A Revision from the 20th Century to the Digital Age, Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin (2019-20); and in the solo show RINSE REPEAT, NOW Gallery, London (2018-19). 

 

Alexi Marshall (b. 1995, London) graduated from the Slade School of Art in 2018. Her work investigates rebirth, spirituality and womanhood, often investigating the cyclical nature of life and death. She uses a range of media but focuses primarily on print, mosaic and textiles. Amongst other awards including the Boise Travel Scholarship and Antony Dawson Print Prize, Marshall was selected as one of the Bloomberg New Contemporaries, exhibiting at Liverpool John Moores University, Liverpool and the South London Gallery, London in 2018. In 2019, Marshall presented her work in her first solo exhibition, The Redemption of Delilah, at Public Gallery, London. More recently, she took part in the group exhibition Dancing At The Edge Of The World (2020) curated by Marcelle Joseph at Sara Zanin Gallery in Rome and her first institutional solo exhibition Cursebreakers opened at the De La Warr Pavillion, Bexhill, UK in collaboration with Flatland Projects in September 2021.

 

Lindsey Mendick (b.1987, London) lives and works in Margate. Mendick received an MA in Sculpture from the Royal College of Art, London in 2017.  Mendickworks predominantly with clay, a medium that is often associated with decoration and the domestic, subverting these historic connotations to create skilled monuments to ‘low culture’ and the contemporary female experience.  Often culminating in elaborate installations, Mendick’s autobiographical work offers a form of catharsis, encouraging the viewer to explore their own personal history through the revisionist lens of the artist.  Her work challenges the male gaze, promoting instead an unapologetic, humorous and, at times, grotesque femininity. She was the recipient of the Henry Moore Foundation Artist Award in 2020, the Alexandra Reinhardt Memorial Award in 2018 and was also selected for Jerwood Survey 2019 and the Future Generations Art Prize 2020.  Recent solo and two-person exhibitions include: Goldsmiths CCA, London; Cooke Latham, London; Eastside Projects, Birmingham; Space, Ilford; Castor Projects, London; Hannah Barry Gallery, London; The Turnpike, Leigh; Zabludowicz Collection, London; Vitrine, Basel; Visual Arts Center, Austin, Texas; Oriel Wrexham, Wales; STCFTHOTS, Leeds and One Thoresby Street, Nottingham.  She has previously been commissioned to make new projects that included ceramic workshops at Kunstraum, London; The Turnpike Pottery, Leigh and for the Cheltenham Council. She is represented by Carl Freedman Gallery, Margate.

 

Francesca Mollett (b. 1991, Bristol) lives and works in London. Influenced by notions of rewilding and entanglement, Mollett uses paint as a way to connect bodies with bodies of water and landscape, oscillating and destabilising the boundaries between self and other through shifting passages. In her paintings, thresholds collapse and fold in on themselves; the material body dissolves; and structures liquefy. Describing her paintings as ‘abstract interior landscapes’ that merge bodies of water with underground worlds, Mollett’s images appear to drift inwards, connecting deeply with the emotional – mystical, even – and that which is secret or hidden. Mollett graduated from the Royal College of Art, London in 2020 and is the recipient of the Aidan Threlfall Award (2020). Recent exhibitions include: Le Coeur Encore, The Approach, London (2021); Down in Albion, L.U.P.O., Milan (2021), Wild Shade, Informality Gallery, Henley (2021); Diaries of a Climate, Baert Gallery, Los Angeles (2021); London Grads Now, Saatchi Gallery, London (2020); 50/50, Fold Gallery, London (2020); Sympathetic Magic, ZONA MISTA, London (2019); and Keyholes at Brockley Gardens, London (2019). Mollett has co-curated a number of shows, including Dust sheet embroidered snow, Project Gallery, Arundel (2019); The Value of Liveliness, White Crypt, London (2018); and Smoke gets in your eye, rural BAES, near Lewes (2018). In 2015-16, she co-ran and founded The Benevolent Association of Excellent Solutions, a project space with artist studio provision in Deptford, London. 

 

London-based artist Annie Morris (b. 1978, UK) studied at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris between 1997 and 2001 under Giuseppe Penone before completing her education at the Slade School of Fine Art in London. Morris’s multi-disciplinary practice draws on both personal experience and the history of art. Encompassing sculpture, tapestry, painting and drawing, Morris’s intuitive use of line weaves between abstraction and representation. Morris’s most recognizable body of work is her ‘Stack’ series, begun in 2014 and inspired by the artist’s grief following a stillbirth. These sculptures, which are comprised of irregular spheres precariously arranged into tall columns, evoke the swell of pregnancy. Sculpted in plaster or cast in bronze, the forms are painted with hand-sourced, raw pigments in vivid hues such as Ultramarine, Viridian and Ochre, which give Morris's lumpen orbs a rich, vibrant hue. Morris uses the same deep pigments in her drawing and tapestry practice, which combines personal ciphers with abstract mark-making and grid-like structures. Recent solo exhibitions include those at Yorkshire Sculpture Park, UK (2021); Timothy Taylor, London and New York (2021, 2020 and 2019); ProjectB Gallery, Milan (2018 and 2015); Winston Wachter Fine Art, New York and Seattle (2018, 2017 and 2015). Selected group exhibitions include: Colour Space, Mucciaccia Gallery, Rome (2021); London Calling, Fundación Bancaja, Valencia, Spain(2021); Idris Khan and Annie Morris, Galerie Isa, Mumbai (2019-20); Astrup Fearnley Museum, Oslo Norway (2018); Surface Work, Victoria Miro, London (2018); Women and Gluck, The Fine Art Society, London (2015). Morris is represented by Timothy Taylor Gallery, London and New York.

 

​​British-Nigerian artist Sola Olulode (b. 1996, London) lives and works in London. Her dreamy queer visions explore embodiments of British Black Womxn and Non-Binary Folx. Working with various mediums of natural dyeing, batik, wax, ink, pastel, oil bar and impasto, she develops textural canvases that explore the fluidities of identities. Drawing inspiration from lived experience, friends and cultural reference points to centre Black Queer Womxn, Olulode emphasises the integral need of representation and celebration of queer intimacies. Olulode received a BA in Fine Art Painting from the University of Brighton in 2018. Since graduating, her work has featured in solo exhibitions in London at V.O. Curations (2020); Brixton Library (2019 and 2018); Lewisham Art House, London (2019); and von Goetz, London (2018). In 2021, Olulode participated in a solo presentation with ART POWHER Contemporary at Volta Art Fair Basel. Selected group exhibitions include: 2020-2021 Womxn of Colour Art Award Exhibition: Altitude, 198 Contemporary Arts and Learning, London (2021); Run With Wolves, Lawrie Shabibi, Dubai (2021); An Infinity of Traces, Lisson Gallery, London (2021); Breakfast under the Tree, Carl Freedman Gallery, Margate, UK (2021); Home is the Body, Sapar Contemporary, New York (2021); Blacklisted: An Indefinite Revolution, Christie’s Education, London (2020); In the Palm of Your Hands, Victoria and Albert Museum, London (2020); Twilights of the Idols, Alice Black Gallery, London (2020); and BBZ BLK BK: Alternative Graduate Show, London (2018).

 

Laurence Owen (b. 1984, Gloucester, UK) lives and works in London after completing a Postgraduate Diploma in Fine Art at Royal Academy Schools, London in 2015 and a BA (Hons) in Fine Art from Falmouth College of Art, Cornwall. Owens’ work is symptomatic of a culture where everything and nothing is being absorbed on a daily basis. It is a response to our analogue and digital spaces becoming amalgamated in the flow of out / inpouring data until the differentiation between the two gets confused. These pieces are mimetic objects that mirror his experience of being subjugated to receiving the amalgam of biochemical and synthetic data all at once. They can be as nonsensical as the surging mass of information that form them; they become their own things born out of other things. The work assumes “worldbuilding”, where the blending of material and semiotic removes boundaries between subject and environment, persona or topos. It provokes collapse between usually distant fields like biography and technology, fact and fiction, private and public in a continuous flux of exchange. Recent solo exhibitions include those at Zabludowicz Collection, London (2020); Lychee One, London (2020); Galerie PCP, Paris (2018); and Evelyn Yard, London (2016). He has participated in numerous group exhibitions including: John Moores Painting Prize, Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, UK (2021); Assembly Points: Bridget Mullen, Laurence Owen, Vanessa da Silva, Public Gallery, London (2021); Mushrooms: The art, design and future of fungi, Somerset House, London (2020), Drawing Biennial, The Drawing Room, London (2019), Moly Sabata, Art O Rama, Marseille (2018); Something Else, Triumph Gallery, Moscow (2018); Absent Bodies, OSL Contemporary, Oslo (2017) and John Moores Painting Prize, Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, UK (2016).

 

British painter Selma Parlour (b.1976, Johannesburg) lives and works in London after completing a PhD in Art at Goldsmiths, University of London in 2014 and a MFA at University of Reading, Berkshire, UK in 2002. Exploring the technical problems of the medium of painting, Parlour makes paintings that are meticulously rendered through soft films of oil on linen to look as though they are drawn, dyed or printed. Her paintings are effectively diagrams or templates; trompe l'oeil illusion is codified through shaded bands, and colour is in-laid as if through a process of marquetry. Colour is a veil (not a skin). The literal transparency of colour borrows from the white primer beneath so that colour glows as if lit from behind. This backlit quality is reminiscent of the screen and the photograph. The analogue apes the digital; whilst the space of painting is imagined as a two-dimensional stage space that curtails fictive distance as it represents it. Recent solo and duo exhibitions include those at Pi Artworks, London and Istanbul (2020, 2019 and 2018); House of St Barnabas, London (2016); Dio Horia, Mykonos, Greece (2015); MOT International Projects, London (2012); and Horton Gallery, New York (with Yelena Popova) (2012). Her work was featured in Bloomberg New Contemporaries, ICA, London (2011). In 2014, Parlour was selected for Thames and Hudson's publication 100 Painters of Tomorrow. In 2020, she won an Arts Council England Creative Development Award, and in 2018, Parlour was granted the Mark Rothko Memorial Trust Award. She was the recipient of the Sunny Dupree Family Award for a Woman Artist at the Summer Exhibition, Royal Academy of Arts, London (2017) and was a Prizewinner at the John Moores Painting Prize, Walker Gallery, Liverpool (2016). Parlour is represented by Dio Horia, Athens, and Pi Artworks, London and Istanbul. 

 

Anousha Payne (b. 1991) lives and works in London. She graduated from Camberwell College of Arts with a BFA in 2014. Mainly working with sculpture and painting, her preferred materials are ceramics, textile, plaster, epoxy and watercolour. Payne's work explores the human pursuit of spirituality in object form, as a mode of cultural expression that is distinct from religious symbolism. Through the process of psychic automatism and free-association, she is interested in the possibilities of imbuing spirituality into an object and in the material qualities of religious or spiritual objects and spaces. Often deploying a reptile skin, Payne's ceramics are intended as hybrid objects, a reminder of the fluidity and shared qualities between humans, animals, the natural world and inanimate objects, questioning material hierarchies and values. Her recent and upcoming solo and duo exhibitions in London include those at Indigo + Madder (2022 and 2020); Public Gallery (2022); Cooke Latham (with Anna Perach) (2021); AG Projects (2017); and 71a Gallery (2017). Selected group exhibitions include: Hawala, Paradise Row Projects, London (2021); Beyond Skin, Tube Culture Hall, Milan (2021); Vessels, Athens, Greece (2021); Disir, Kristian Day, London (2019); Into the Soft, C4 Projects, Copenhagen (2019); Something Else, Victoria Gallery, Samara, Russia (2018); Papercuts by Kristian Day, Saatchi Gallery, London (2018); Something Else, Triumph Gallery, Moscow (2018); Wild Encounters, Guest Projects, London (2018); and HOT MILK, Post_Institute, London (2018). Payne is represented by Indigo + Madder, London.

 

Based in London, Anna Perach (b. 1985, USSR) is a Ukrainian born Israeli artist who holds an MFA with Distinction from Goldsmiths, University of London (2020). Perach’s artistic practice explores the dynamic between personal and cultural myths, finding the specific interest in how our private narratives are deeply rooted in ancient folklore and storytelling. She creates sculptural hybrids starting from female archetypes, in order to examine ideas of identity, gender and craft. Her main mediums are performance and wearable sculptures realised with a technique called tufting, which consists in making hand-made carpet textile. Through this medium, Perach examines how elements associated with the domestic sphere such as textiles and carpet operate as an extension of the self and reflect one's heritage and gender role. Recent solo and duo exhibitions include those at Cooke Latham, London (with Anousha Payne) (2021); Herzliya Museum of Contemporary Art, Israel (2021); and ADA Projects, Rome (2021). Selected group exhibitions include: Served, Sarabande Foundation, London (2021); Staying with the Trouble, l’étrangère, London (2021); The Sun and the Moon, Vitrine, Basel (2021); Touch Me Not, The Ryder Projects, Madrid (2021); London Grads Now, Saatchi Gallery, London (2020); Tomorrow: London, White Cube, London (2020); In Stitches, Larsen Warner, Stockholm (2020); Storia Notturna, Centrale Feis, Trento, Italy (2020); Mostyn Open, Mostyn, Llandudno, Wales (2019); The Mother Art Prize 2019, Mimosa House, London (2019); and Textus Ex Machina, aqb Project Space, Budapest (2019). Perach is represented by ADA Projects, Rome.

 

British painter Glen Pudvine (b. 1989, Chester, UK) lives and works in London where he co-runs the artist-led project space, PLAZA PLAZA in Elephant and Castle. In 2019, Pudvine graduated from the Royal Academy Schools in London after finishing his BA in Fine Art at Leeds Metropolitan University in 2011. Pudvine takes his nude self – complete with facial hair, musculature and erect penis - as the subject of his paintings, begging the question of whether narcissism or vulnerability drives this exploration. In the artist’s own words, ‘I don’t know where my vulnerability ends and my performance begins. What is actually being revealed about being a man, a human or a painter is a question I keep asking myself.’ These self-portraits often include interactions or exchanges with other species, such as dinosaurs, that subtly point to the desire for a monstrous transformation or expression of existential dread. In 2021, his work was featured in a solo exhibition at J Hammond Projects in London and a duo show with Dominic Watson at Quench Gallery, Margate. Selected group exhibitions, include: Young Monsters, Lychee One, London (2019); Premiums: Interim Projects 2018, Royal Academy of Arts, London (2018); New Contemporaries 2017, Block 336, London and Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, Newcastle (2017-18); Addams Outtakes, Roaming Projects, London (2017); Something Like You, ANDOR, London (2017); Tired and Clever, Westminster Waste, London (2015); Every Emotion Under the Sun, Plaza Plaza, London (2015); and Tossed Salad and Scrambled Eggs (with Jesse Wine), Cactus Gallery, Liverpool (2015).

 

London-based British artist Antonia Showering (b. 1991, London) is known for her richly layered depictions of family members in landscape settings, deployed in warm, velvety washes of red, orange and green. Ambiguous yet psychologically charged, Showering’s paintings err between the abstract and the allegorical. Showering holds a BA with honours from City and Guilds of London Art School (2016) and an MFA from Slade School of Fine Art (2018). Her work was presented in an online solo show at White Cube, London in 2020. She has been featured in dozens of group exhibitions, including IRL: In Real Life, Timothy Taylor, London (2021), Dwelling is the Light, Timothy Taylor, London (2020); Society at Chalton Gallery, London (2019); Out Of This World at Stephen Friedman Gallery, London (2019); In the Company Of at TJ Boulting Gallery, London (2018); New Contemporaries at South London Gallery, London (2018); Kennedy Doig & Showering, Baert Gallery, Los Angeles (2018); and Great Women Artists at Mother, London (2017). Showering was the recipient of the New Contemporaries x SPACE Studio Bursary Award in 2018, The Great Women Artists Residency at Palazzo Monti in 2018 and the 2018 Henry Tonks Award.

 

British artist Holly Stevenson (b. Norfolk, UK) lives and works in London where she makes fluid ceramic forms that explore Sigmund Freud’s favourite ashtray and last cigar as an analytical metaphor. Her sculptural ‘pots’ diligently embody the ashtray and cigar, as though they were two gendered male and female forms, as the artist reconfigures them into a clay language of her own. In 2011, she completed her MA in Fine Art from the Chelsea College of Art and Design with the generous help of the Stanley Picker Foundation. Recent solo and duo exhibitions include those at Sid Motion Gallery, London (2021); Richard Saltoun Gallery, London (with Violet Costello) (2021); The White Box Gallery, London (with Anja Lubach) (2020); Procreate Project, London (2020); Caroline Fisher Projects, Norwich, UK (with Lydia Hardwick) (2020); and Gazelli Art House, London (2013). Selected group exhibitions include: Ceramics: The Central Core, Part II, Richard Saltoun Gallery, London (2021); Les Danses Nocturnes, East Contemporary, Milan at Spread Museum, Entrevaux, France (2021); In Momentum, Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery, London (2021); Small is Beautiful, 38th Edition, Flowers Gallery, London (2020); Mother Art Prize 2020, Cromwell Place, London (2020); The Collector’s Room, JGM Gallery, London (2020); and Structures that Co-operate Get Paid!, Cubitt Gallery, London (2019).

 

Zoe Williams (b. 1983, Salisbury, UK) is a London-based artist who graduated with a Masters of Fine Art from The Glasgow School of Art, Glasgow in 2012. Her practice incorporates a range of mediums, including moving image, ceramics, drawing and performance, and is often collaborative in its process and outcome. These elements are combined to create immersive objects and environments, which conjure a playful and corrosive interchange between notions of the erotic, craft, magic, gender, hedonism and excess. Through the cross contamination of these influences, she wishes to provoke conversations around the pressures of power, the politics of sex and the economics of production. Her work explores the shifting use values of objects and rituals through history and within contemporary society. Recent solo exhibitions include those at Ciaccia Levi Gallery, Paris (2021-22);Mimosa House, London (2019); Riva Tunnel, Monte-Carlo (2019); Galerie Antoine Levi, Paris (2018); Studio Amaro, Naples, Italy (2018); and David Roberts Art Foundation, London (2017). Recent selected group exhibitions include: The Fountain Show II, Sundy Gallery, London (2021); Bathing Nervous Limbs, Arusha Gallery, Edinburgh (2021); Dreams Made Flesh, Galeria Catinca Tabacaru, Bucharest, Romania (2021); Modern Conversations, Tate St Ives redisplay, St Ives, UK (2021); CERAMICS: The Central Core ‘PART 1’, online at Richard Saltoun Gallery, London (2021); Clay Scheme Talisman Project, Pool School Gallery, Cornwall, UK (2020);  Cater to you, EIGEN + ART Lab, Berlin, Germany (2019); Futures of Love, Magasins Généraux, Pantin, France (2019); Something soft, Kunstraum, London (2019); Playful Aggressions, Greengrassi, London (2019); 6th Moscow International Biennale for Young Art, Moscow (2018); Mademoiselle, CRAC OCCITANIE, Sète, France (2018); Friends and Neighbours Project, Kunstraum, London (2018); If you can’t stand the heat, Roaming Projects, London (2018); Breaking Shells, The Koppel Project, London (2018); and (X)A Fantasy, DRAF, London (2017).

 

Lian Zhang (b. 1984, Hangzhou, China) is a London-based Chinese artist. She received her first MA in Painting from the China Academy of Art, Hangzhou in 2010 and a second MA from the Royal College of Art, London in 2013. She has won several painting prizes, including Curator's Prize: The Open West (2014) and Hine Painting Prize (2013), and was shortlisted for the Valerie Beston Award (2013). Zhang’s recent painting practice focuses on the collection and combination of images with various spatiotemporal aspects. Through these pictorial compositions, spatial memory is fabricated, leading to multiple narrative threads that disrupt subject-predicate relations, creating a new-temporal painting language. Her work was featured in a solo exhibition at Lychee One in 2020.  Recent group exhibitions include: Unfair Weather, Lychee One, London (2021); Fertile Laziness, Platform Projects, London (2021); Anti-Social Isolation, Saatchi Gallery with Delphian Gallery, London (2020); Bone Memory, Lychee One, London (2018); Rifts in Silence, M Art Center, Shanghai (2018); Flickering Boundaries, MadeIn Gallery, Shanghai (2018); and Mingled Spaces, Lychee One, London (2017).