Zi Ling's watercolour entitled
'Tea' is in
Figurative Art Now, the
Columbia Threadneedle Prize exhibition, at
Mall Galleries which showcases the very best in new figurative and representational art. This year many of the works selected for this exhibition will go on tour to
Palazzo Strozzi in Florence, the city’s largest temporary exhibition space, for a special four-week exhibition opening in July 2016. Ling's watercolour work
'Cigarette Break' (2015) has been selected for the
Lynn Painter-Stainers Prize 2016. This exhibition will take place at the Mall Galleries from 7th to 13th March. Ling creates portraits or explorations of relationships by working from photographs with which she feels an intuitive connection.
Working in collaboration with
Counterpoints Arts,
Ben Uri’s latest exhibition,
Unexpected, continues their exploration of the themes of identity and migration, emphasising a wide-ranging contemporary
response. Following on from their centenary exhibition,
Out of Chaos, held last autumn at
Somerset House, the exhibition returns them to their principal location at Boundary Road, NW8.
Works by Ben Uri artists including Frank Auerbach, Eva Frankfurther, Julie Held and Josef Herman
will be shown alongside those by invited artists – all from migrant backgrounds – across a range
of disciplines and media. This includes paintings by Tam Joseph and Eugene Palmer; drawings by
Behjat Omer Abdulla; sculpture and installations by Ana Cvorovic, Joyce Kalema, Jasleen Kaur,
Fokowan George Kelly and Zory Shahrokhi; photography by Güler Ates, James Russell Cant, Juan
del Gado and former Community Partners
Oxford House; textiles by Salah ud Din; an audio-visual
piece by Jessica Marlowe and an HLF commissioned film responding to Out of Chaos by
Edwin Mingard.
Both individually and collectively, the featured works touch on themes of journeys, displacement,
loss, memory and identity, evoking powerful and sometimes unexpected juxtapositions and
responses.
CNB is presenting
Britannic Myths, the gallery’s second solo show by the acclaimed British artist
Joe Machine. The twelve paintings that make up the exhibition have been created in collaboration with the academic and writer
Dr Steven O’Brien, and are based on a dialogue around his soon to be published book,
Britannia Stories.
Britannia Stories explores twenty myths. While all of these are commonly associated with the British Isles, many originate from other civilisations, countries and cultures, and were adopted – and adapted – as a consequence of invasion and conquest. The two men worked closely in examining the origins of all the stories, and on determining the relevance of each to the 21st century, with Machine’s paintings influencing O’Brien’s writings, and vice versa.
Says Machine: ‘The power of the stories lies not so much as folk tales from isolated islands, but in their universal connection to ancient cultures. These dialogues with the divine, and struggles of the human spirit are timeless, and show us how myths are as important today as they ever were.’
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