Autumn 2022

Abi Ola, Choon Mi Kim, Kate Burling, Henry Gibbs, Eva Dixon, Vilte Fuller

Abi Ola

For my art practice I specialise in painting, drawing, screen printing, collaging, batik, and textiles. My artwork focuses on shapes and patterns. I get inspiration from old photographs, fabrics that I find in my house, and different exhibitions. For example, Oceanic art from the Royal Academy of Arts, African textiles from the British Museum, and William Morris wallpaper designs. When painting the figures in the photographs I realised that I was much more interested in the shapes and patterns that I found in their clothes than the figures themselves. Therefore, I began to focus on the shapes and patterns and created my own pattern designs in my paintings. I use the above mentioned pattern reference sources to explore my identity, being West African, and living in Britain. For example, some of the patterns come from Nigerian traditional attire, worn by my father, while others are floral patterns that my mother wore, typically associated with British textiles. My patterns go beyond my two dimensional paintings, they also find their way onto the interior design of buildings, clothes, and skin. This is a way for me to completely envelop myself and the viewer within my world of patterns. 

Choon Mi Kim

I checked the best-before date on every product at the Asian market. I was standing on a platform, waiting for the next train. I was thinking about last night.
Catcalling. A guy, looking young with AirPods on.

I see platforms, trains and a river when the water drops.
I am dubious about train stations.

I like looking at little twigs on trees. They form sound, patterns, and they float. I tried to see them from the other side of the river, and took photos of ghosts. The distance makes me paint. I count them together on a blank canvas. I feel like I can see in parallel. It is almost transparent, unmethodical.

Maybe, this is just like thunder after lightning.

I look at the whole painting. I see the act of notation. There was a pause, always, like a fleeting smile on her face. I was holding brushes in both my hands. I don’t want to paint people. I don’t want to paint faces.

I waded along the riverbed of Deptford Creek. I saw a pair of sandals embedded there in the middle. People say black looks best on me.
I hope the process will lead the product.

Kate Burling

Kate's work explores the ephemerality of life and the certainty of death. She explains how her work is a reaction to her fear of the ability of sharp hard objects to puncture the body. ‘I’m interested in the difference between the soft inside of the body and the hard outside.’ It reminds her of the fleeting nature of time, the inescapability of the materiality of the body, and the possibility of the outside coming in. 

Kate creates soft, hazy images by rubbing paint with her hands into the canvas, using a latex glove. By only using her fingers, the distinction between the object, subject and surroundings becomes even more fluid.

Henry Gibbs

Henry is an artist based in London. He has previously participated in Goodeye Projects residency and exhibited with Christie's, Pictorum Gallery, Ridley Road Project Space and The Who Gallery. Working mostly in painting, Henry aims to explore the deformation of the body through remnants of imagery, shapes and forms that reflect on digital spaces we dependently inhabit. Utilising techniques of masking, gesture and ben-day dots the work (de)codes implications of digitalisation, movement, identity, and futurist systems.

Eva Dixon

Eva Dixon lives and works in London. Dixon takes the persona of a ‘mad-scientist’, investigating materials and subverting their purpose to fit a need within the work. Most recently this has taken the form of sheer polyester assemblage stretched over re-constructed stretcher bars. The geometric forms in Dixon’s work are pulled from construction, mirroring the appropriated materials the artist uses such as electrical shrink tubing, paracord and recycled wooden pallets. In doing this Dixon blurs the lines between painting, sculpture and craft whilst investigating how the relationship between opacity and transparency can expose the structure and surface as one. Dixon’s use of stable and unstable materials leaves the work in a constant tension, offering a site to question making process and the binaries between labours.

Vilte Fuller

Viltė Fuller (b. 1996, Klaipeda, Lithuania) lives and works in London. She holds a BA in Painting and Printmaking from The Glasgow School of Art. Fuller’s current body of work examines the intricate connections between technology, the human form, and the pervasive influence of workplace culture. 

Viltė Fuller’s work has been featured in numerous international exhibitions. Most recently, Fuller presented the solo exhibitions Gravesend at Mou Projects in Hong Kong, Sleeper Agent at Superzoom in Paris, Strangers by the Side of the Road at Polina Berlin Gallery in New York and Little Kiosk of Bone Juice at Niru Ratnam in London. Among the group exhibitions she has participated in are The Unlimited Dream Company II at Hannah Barry Gallery in London, I want to turn into you at Coulisse Galerie in Stockholm, NEXT at Christie’s in London, (It’s my party) I can cry if I want to at Guts Gallery in London and The Feeling is Mutual at Galerie Hussenot at Paris.