The magnificent church of St Stephen Walbrook in the City of London played host to Exiles, a body of work by London-based Italian photographer Matilde Damele (17 – 24 September 2019).

The exhibition was on show during the Open City weekend (21-22 September 2019). Open House London is the world’s largest architecture festival, giving free public access to 800+ buildings, walks, talks and tours over one weekend in September each year.  St Stephen Walbrook opened its doors and took part in the weekend.

Read more…

Silvia Lerin’s sculpture ‘Neons from Heaven’ was commissioned by Art in the Churches and Arts Council England for Masham Church in the Yorkshire Dales and is on show throughout the summer, until 28 September.

The sculpture is made of canvas tubes, each capped with a mirror. Looking up to the heavens for guidance, the viewer might reflect that the answers lie in ourselves. The sculpture programme encourages visitors to consider church spaces as being for ourselves in the context of the surrounding history and architecture.

Curated by Joanna Bryant in collaboration with Julian Page

This gallery exhibition includes perfectly small works of art from many of our diverse and multi-disciplinary artists. This show ring fences that diversity by restricting each artist to works that are smaller than 40 x 40 cm.

Includes: Sophie Arup, Lee Borthwick, Sir Peter Blake, Matilde Damele, Sara Dudman RWA, Ann-Helen English, Alan Franklin, Nikolai Ishchuk, Deborah Lanyon, Silvia Lerin, Lyndsey Keeling, Paul Knight, François Pont, Robinson & McMahon, Ian Robinson, Laura Jane Scott, Chris Sims, Barry Stedman, Kostas Synodis, Joella Wheatley

Curated by Joanna Bryant in collaboration with Julian Page

The notion of the inner construct immediately conjures references to frameworks, pathways and codes resulting from our external experiences. The writings of JG Ballard extend this beyond our experiences to consider the effects that our physical surroundings have on the psyche, projecting external reality onto the imaginative narrative.

“Does the angle between two walls have a happy ending?” JG Ballard

The curation of our dialogue takes this premise and selects work from four female artists, showing the fusion of both their inner and outer spaces. The built environment, nature and the cosmos are represented to form shared realities, based on the commonality of our inner states. Often, liminal spaces will act as metaphors for the parts of ourselves that we ignore, or of which we are unaware, and where the artists’ imaginations seek to remake their worlds.

Including work by Silvia Lerin, Matilde Damele and Joella Wheatley.

Joanna Bryant Projects presents a solo show by François Pont whose engravings/paintings open up spaces, interrupted by gestural accents and lines that rise, descend, dig and move away, capturing the vibrations of urban wastelands and gardens – landmarks in a vast world.

Group Show Creative Fury offers an alternative showing of works by William Kentridge (b. 1955, Johannesburg) in the context of the Hungarian Cold War artist György Kovásznai (1934-1983) and four mid-career contemporary artists: Marcelle Hanselaar, Yvonne Crossley, Kate McCrickard and Cally Shadbolt. Selected works and films are shown alongside printmaking, drawing and painting. Creative Fury brings an opportunity for more insight into the work of William Kentridge, at a time when the Whitechapel Art Gallery is staging a major show of his work in London, yet places his work in context with both an artist from the past and artists working in the present.

Read more…

Curated by Joanna Bryant, this solo show presents new work by the contemporary English abstract painter, Chris Sims. Chris Sims has a growing collector’s market in the UK and his paintings are often considered to be reminiscent of the St Ives painter Peter Lanyon.

A solo show of recent drawings and sculpture by the artist Alan Franklin, in a new exhibition, SEE SAW. Curated by Joanna Bryant, this is a playful and inventive exploration of materials and processes, seeking the unfamiliar in the familiar.

The concept of the ’emerging artist’, explored beyond the initial act of emerging.

Katja Larsson, Jay Price, Josie Cockram, Nikolai Ishchuk, Cally Shadbolt, Joella Wheatley, Kostas Synodis, David Watkins, Alix Marie, Silvia Lerin

Endurance, passion and dedication are key character traits for the pursuit of an artistic career, and in the season of summer degree shows and emerging artists, we present a two-part group show of noteworthy artists who have ’emerged’, have continued a rigorous line of enquiry and are managing to establish their practices in and around London despite the challenging economic conditions.

Curated by Joanna Bryant

Visible Traces offers an alternative showing of works by Ian Stephenson (1934-2000) in the context of a select group show, including paintings by Robinson & McMahon and glass sculpture by Jayne Wilton. “Countless happenings in time present as one simultaneous expression. Emptiness filled with matter. Solids filled with space.” The Independent, 2000

Curated by Joanna Bryant