We are very proud to celebrate our 20th anniversary this November, with a retrospec-

tive show of artists from our residency, alongside performers and friends who passed

through our doors along the way. You are invited to join us in celebration on:

Thursday 21st November from 18:00 at The Muse,

269 Portobello Rd, London W11 1LR

We’ll then pick up guests and travel to our partner space [Maxfactor House, Water-

mans Park, High Street, Brentford TW8] or meet you there at 20:00. (Return travel

to Portobello Road will be arranged for those who need).

We look forward to seeing you there and sharing a significant event in the history of

our work with all involved.

Exhibiting artists:

Corinne Charton-Grahn

Patricio (Pato) Bosich

Jayson Singh

Alice Hall

Caroline Jane Harris

John Nicol

Ian Robinson

Coral Churchill

Gosia Łapsa-Malawska

Yole Quintero          

Mahaul Harley Leca 

Mark Tamer  

Yuichiro Kikuma

Gemma Milligan

Nicholas Cheeseman

Samantha Y. Huang

Cecilia Di Paolo

Hugo Lami

Naira Musqtaq

Catriona Robertson

Camilla Hanley

Eleni Maragaki

Matthew Dardart

Khrystyna Kmil

Lauren Goldie

Margarita Francesca Loze

James Grossman

FUTURESCAPE documents the work of Lauren Goldie, a 2023 graduate of the annual Muse Residency Program. Since completing the residency, Lauren is undertaking a PhD at Central Saint Martins. The research explores ways sculpture can anticipate speculative technologies and the potential environmental consequences of asteroid mining. Due to the lack of proximity when working within the context of outer space, Lauren uses artistic practice to build tangible familiarity with distant space entities and excavation processes. FUTURESCAPE is influenced by a recent NASA sample retrieval mission to the asteroid Bennu and the ‘Materials International Space Station Experiment’ (MISSE). MISSE is mounted to the exterior of the International Space Station, testing the durability and performance of materials under the extreme conditions of outer space.

Catriona is fascinated by the idea of the urban landscape as a collage. She is inspired by how over time architecture forms an urban geology where layers of history are built on top of foundations. Her work responds to the interconnectedness of nature and the city as a landscape resulting in sculptures that embody an architectural imprint. There is a subterranean network of hidden cities beneath us, organic intertwined with inorganic. By covering the ground in concrete, tar and bitumen, we are disrupting the ecological cycle as these inorganic materials degrade at different rates with little or no nutritional benefit to the earth. Her use of re-claimed and re-cycled materials reflect on our throw-away culture, where the bedrock beneath the future city will be made up of detritus and past human relics rapidly compressed to form a new transient sedimentary layer in deep time. Robertson imagines a post-human future which nature will come back through the cracks as the concrete breaks down and where gargantuan worm-like creatures have adapted to digest these synthetic materials.

Her sculptures burrow and bury themselves, digging into the ground and into the ceiling. Tunnelling through in-between spaces, they re-emerge with a new hardened stone-like shell. On the edge of collapse and precarity she performs a ritual of breakage in her process, pulping materials to their core fibres. By squeezing, cracking and blending these opposing elements into a collage, soft textiles start to ooze between the gaps in the facade, as if forming a synthetic marble from plasticised concrete.

Immerse yourself in Lee Harris's counterculture stories that form part of our community histories, showcasing events and cultural shifts that have shaped and touched people's lives over the decades up to the present day. Explore film, music, spoken word performances, artwork, photographs, posters, comix, and other materials from the 1960s to the 2020s, carefully curated from the Lee Harris Archive. This exhibition represents counterculture in the community and its various artistic expressions over the years and up to now.

Lee ran London's first "headshop" in the early 1970s on Portobello Road, in the building now housing The MUSE Gallery, which was the former site of his shop Alchemy. The exhibition comes full circle, showcasing some of the early work of the graphic artist Bryan Talbot through the publication of the Brainstorm Comix series by Alchemy Press, along with selected artwork from HomeGrown, the counterculture and cannabis-focused magazine that Lee published and edited from 1977 until 1982.

From tales of theatre in the late fifties and early 1960s to hanging out with Mods in Soho, from playwriting to Swinging Sixties London and the hippiedom of the Summer of Love, experience the cultural changes over the decades and beyond the millennium. The Lee Harris Archive continues to inspire artists with present-day interpretations, including a contemporary soundscape by Hicham Bensassi.

BOOK: "Echoes of the Underground: A Footsoldier’s Tales" offers a first-hand look into the cultural revolutions of the 60s, 70s, and beyond through a rich tapestry of articles, interviews, and personal notes. Lee Harris, a participant in the counterculture movements of these pivotal times, provides an authentic narrative that captures the essence of a generation striving for artistic expression, social justice, and profound change.

SOUNDSCAPE: The soundscape created by Hicham Bensassi is a psychedelic, ambient, auditory journey. It features a blend of new music compositions, audio collages, and rare live performance recitals of select pieces from Lee Harris's book Echoes of the Underground: A Footsoldier's Tales. The soundscape includes the track 'Summer of 68' featuring Amira Harris, and showcases musicians such as James Burnham, Paul Bangash, and Georgina Brett.

The Muse Gallery & Studio is proud to present the summer group show 2024, as part of the 2025 Residency program competition. Each year we host a short-list show to complete recruitment for the residency program; allowing our team and applicants to work alongside one another and develop the relationships and experiential assets that will deliver a successful program.

The residency competition group show will take place on the 18th of July until the 4th of August, featuring 12 short listed artists and marking the final stage of recruitment for the 2025 residency program. This year we are proud to host: Ben Grosse-Johannboecke, Fan Bangyu, Yewon Lee, Piotr Grabowski, Shatrudhan K. Gupta, Lukas Leisinger, Man Mei To, Eva Bachmann, Kirti Virmani, Weng Io (Yoyo), Nina Gonzalez-Park and Ramzi Mallat

This multi-disciplinary show will feature 2D,  3D work, installation and print, filling both studio and gallery with current work from some of the best BA and MA graduates from London universities. The work will occupy our entire space, with artists present during opening hours to represent their ideas and practices and begin integrating with the area before their term in January.

Since 2004, The Muse has supported a residency program offering subsidised studio practice and professional development. Recent graduates are invited to take ownership of a portion of the space and begin work with an artist led team, curate shows, develop practices and culminate in group and solo show experiences – facilitating the transition from academia to the professional arena.

James Grossman

Margarita Loze

Romi Thornton

2024 RESIDENCY FINAL SHOW 

After six months at The Muse, artists Margarita Frančeska Loze, James Grossman, and Romi Thornton will be showing a new body of work to mark the end of the residency programme. The show will run for four weeks with work that reflects a transition from academia to the professional world, as well as working in the richly diverse market streets of North Kensington. We invite you to visit the exhibition and support these emerging talents as they embark on successful careers as independent artists. 

Margarita Frančeska Loze

Margarita Frančeska Loze is a recent graduate of MFA Fine Art from Kingston School of Art and is a co-founder of Conch Collective. She has been nominated for The Muse Residency 2024 and in year 2022, she was selected for the Venice Biennale Fellowship programme. The work of Margarita is a celebration of the poetics of the ordinary. Her recent work combines textile production with the use of found objects. By using a variety of mediums, such as hand-drawn stop motion, writing, embroidery and sculpture, she attempts to capture the transient nature of life and create a tangible connection to universal and personal memories. Through her experimental narrative approach, Margarita makes a dreamlike ontology, to capture the nuances of spatial, temporal and poetic navigation. 

https://www.margaritaieva.com/

James Grossman

James Grossman is a Multidisciplinary Designer Maker, who combines his background in Product Design with his love of form and sculpture. Exploring the relationships between organic forms in the natural and digital realms. The formulation of his designs is primarily constructed through simulations and digital craftsmanship to create works incorporating themes of tactility, connection, and containment. He aims to capture obscure movement across a variety of mediums, by experimenting with advanced technologies. By doing so he plans to investigate speculative futures and inspire his audience to consider unexplored questions.

https://jamesgrossman.co.uk/

Romi Thornton

As a multimedia artist, Romi investigates the profound impact consumerism has on our sense of self. Through installation, she navigates the false promises and facades maintained by corporations. Her practice aims to shed light and provoke critical reflection on the hidden narratives in commerce by exploring the expanded role of the exhibition visitor as a quasi-consumer. One integral aspect of her work is the spurious brand Infinitech, founded by the unprincipled CEO Rosemary Barbara Thompson. The narratives embody the ergonomically alluring, yet illusory promises tech companies offer us. The spaces she creates suggest order and control. But, in leaving easter eggs for the viewer within the curations - and by recreating the peculiar and slightly off moments we experience with customer service - simulations are revealed, and pretences are broken.

https://romithornton.com/

Jean - Cazals - Man of Colours

23 May - 9 June,

PV, 23 May, 6-9pm

Jean Cazals is a French London based photographer living in Notting Hill for many years. He was raised in Geneva before coming to London. Jean graduated at the London College of Printing now call LCC with a BA in Visual Communication. His career was a love affair between portraiture, food and travel. Jean work across editorial, publishing (shot over 80 books), corporate and especially in hospitality.

Jean’s work primarily revolves around location based photography, characterised by a distinctive graphic approach and a keen sense of colour and space. His ability to perceive beyond the ordinary has garnered both praise and awards across his career. Jean’s approach to composition and photography is deeply rooted in concept and idea creation.

‘I saw Jama Elmi in the streets of Portobello numerous time with all his rainbow colours suits and finally approach him early 2023 to propose him to do some portraits, that he accepted straight away.                                                                  

In this series of portraits of Somalian born Jama Elmi, the concept was to bring forward Jama's numerous flamboyant colours suits that he is wearing everyday for the pleasure of the public in the street and his work. I wanted to bring some quirkiness to the portraits in bringing objects or gestures. It’s all very graphic to keep the impact. 

In 2018 Jama Elmi was travelling on the tube and notice hordes of monochrome suits on public transport and Jama was one of them going to work as a hotel duty manager in Heathrow. That was then, now Jama decided to stop and change his life to colour and dress in a flamboyant way. Jama work as a mental support worker in Notting Hill. His suits play an important therapeutic role in his day to day work. Each resident gets to pick their favourite colour for him to wear on a chosen day. The ’therapy’ extends to the outside world too, always bringing a smile to the face of people he crosses in the streets.  

The Somalian born fashionista remembers pushing the boundaries at school with daring uniform. "Nobody told me what to do " he claimed. He recalled turning up to school in bright green clothes and bullies taunting him with "the circus is in town". Towards the end of his teens, his love of colour had disappeared. His dad, who was an ambassador to the UK, was able to migrate in London with his six children feeing the civil war, died early and Jama worked hard to look after his mum . He still wore suits at work, but they were dreary. Then after his revelation on the tube , Jama said “ Now I am the creme brule, sweet that make your eyes water.” 

Jama found a tailor in Shepherd's Bush and he bought dozens of suits over the last few years from him. His motto when choosing what to wear: "The louder the suit, the louder the people". Jama bought his first three piece from River Island and then went his favourite coffee spot - Vale Cafe on Harrow Road - where before he had time to stir his cappuccino he was bombarded with flattery. "Thirty seconds from the house to the café, compliments coming left right and centre. It was like I was in another dimension," he said.

"I sat down for 20 minutes and there were 50 pictures. People said 'You look amazing', 'Keep it up', and 'Only you can do this'. I said to myself 'Oh no, I have opened the Pandora's Box. I thought 'If this suit did that, let's try another one, and another one'. In three months I was buying a new suit.”

www.jeancazals.net

Oliver Dorrell - Walking After Bruegel: Paintings from Mountain Huts

25 April - 19 May

Oliver Dorrell’s paintings are made on long walks. On these walks, he carries sized silk, a collapsible stretcher frame, gum arabic and dry pigment so he can set up temporary studios in mountain huts, shelters, barns or on picnic benches. Often, the walks link two cities across a wilderness and are prompted by art history or literature. For example, in October and November 2022, he walked across the Alps from Milan to Munich. It was a walk inspired by the Alpine journey Bruegel made in 1554.

Having set up a temporary studio, his intention might be to paint something he’d seen or felt along the way; like the lonely feeling of being watched by a chamois; or the futuristic elegance of a flyover plugging into a mountain side tunnel; or an absent glacier; or the sensation of rain from under an umbrella. The intention, however, has to compete with the restrictions caused by weather — this could be the cold, or a blizzard forecast — and the exertion of walking through the landscapes, and the action of folding, carrying and re-stretching the silk support, as well as the awkwardness of making watercolours from dry pigment and silk. These antagonistic things resolve into spontaneous paintings, creased and worn by their travels, and which, framed behind glass after his walk, become fragile artifacts to the physical, more primordial way of understanding our modern world through traveling on foot.

28 March - 21 April 2024

Annamarie Dzendrowskyj - Shadows of Perception

“In a world addicted to consumption and power, art celebrates emptiness and surrender. In a

world accelerating to greater and greater speed, art reminds us of the timeless.”

- J.L. Adams, Winter Music.1

Annamarie Dzendrowskyj seeks to examine the indeterminate nature of 'ways of seeing' and 'ways of being'. She explores the ambiguous ‘grey area’ between presence and absence by exploring fleeting moments of a world in constant flux. Moments in time she sees as suggesting a space, rather than defining a space, one that exists between what is seen and unseen, a zone of indiscernablity.

Indiscernable zones and spaces have been at the heart of Dzendrowskyj's life experiences which act as a catalyst for her work. What is seen underwater is affected by interference - movement, light, weather conditions and in this sense, nothing appears clearly defined. This is reflected in her work which presents the emergence and dissolution of forms and settings, employing a process of creation and erasure, concealing and revealing. Exploring the tension between figuration and abstraction, inviting the viewer to challenge their perception of time, place and space. She allows for empirical perception, remembrance and imagination to merge to evoke a kind of netherworld that conflates time, place vision, and memory, a 'space between'.

A space between that offers a moment for unencumbered thinking in a world invaded by technology, social media and hyper-reality. Dzendrowskyj sees this space, not in terms of a void, but as signifying a form of refuge from the stresses of 21 Century cyber-life. A space, to allow for an alternative option for creativity of the human mind and spirit offering room for contemplation and allowing the viewer to take a moment to breathe, engage with, and respond with their own opinions, experiences and emotions.

The works presented by Dzendrowskyj in this exhibition were inspired by Junichiro Tanizaki's 'In Praise of Shadows'. This essay is an exploration of traditional Japanese aesthetics and culture, where beauty is found in the shadows of life, in the interplay between darkness and light, highlighting that one cannot exist without the other. Tanizaki offers 'a gentle warning against the quest for airbrushed perfection, and reminds us that too much light can pollute and obscure our natural world.'2 A message that bears critical relevance today with the concerning reality that faces the global community - climate change.

Dzendrowskyj positions the natural world as the central subject in the work, drawing upon imagery from the Blue Mountains World Heritage Area in Australia taken in 2020 a few months after the devastating 2019-2020 bushfire season . Presenting a view of the Australian landscape, highlighting both its beauty and its precarity due to climate change. Drawing attention to our responsibility to act now to preserve the fragility of our environment for future generations and our collective responsibility in shaping a sustainable future, towards sensitivity and empathy for the natural world.

Annamarie Dzendrowskyj originally trained as a classical ballet dancer followed by a career as a PADI Scuba Diving Instructor/Examiner. She holds a BA Hons Degree in Philosophy ( Lancaster University, UK) with speciality subjects in existentialism and aesthetics, a BA in Fine Art with electives in Printmaking, Photography and Sculpture and a BA Honours Degree in Painting (National Art School, Sydney, Australia).

Dzendrowskyj has exhibited in solo and group exhibitions in the UK and internationally. Shortlisted for art prizes including Arte Laguna Prize (Venice) 15th, 13th, 10th Editions where she was awarded Caudan Arts Centre Exhibition, Singulart Prize, Biafarin Honours Award and Fallani Serigraphy Residency. Her work is held in both public and private collections including the National Art School Drawing Archive (Sydney, Australia), St.Vincent's Hospital (Sydney, Australia), ICI Casa (International Cultural Institute, Venice, Italy) and the National Visual Arts Library (Dublin, Ireland).

Web page: www.annamariedzendrowskyj.com

Instagram: @annamarie_dzendrowskyj

Trip the Light

Ann Churchill - Coral Churchill - Fearon Gold - Gosia Łapsa-Malawska - Caroline Mackenzie - Damian Rayne
Opening Night: 7 March 2024, 6-9pm

7 - 24 March 2024

This is an exhibition of dreamlands and inner worlds, of representation, symbolism and abstraction. Works by six artists share their subjective and fantastical experiences of worlds as they visualise them. The nature of the triptych form allows multiple perspectives to exist simultaneously in one moment. This trinity shapes the works in the exhibition along with a reference to a much evolved but often quoted line from John Milton's (1608-1674), L'Allegro (1645) "Com, and trip it as ye go, On the light fantastick toe."  To trip the light here is taken as to dance lightly through the world. In the exhibition, the relationship of image and form to sound, rhythm and movement is used as a playful foil to consider the borderlands of external to internal, the place where the body encounters it's environment and the porousness of this threshold. A lightness of touch, or approach, is achieved by each of the artists as they seek out and celebrate the possibilities of creativity to communicate the invisible or the spiritual.

Naishadh Jani - Urban Narratives

20 February - 1 March

Pv 20 February 6-9pm

Being an Art Historian, I look at things through an historical lense. This series of my work discusses Urban Narratives and how objects change the meaning of our lives.

My perception of the urban state is reflected through objects, or what I see as ‘urban interventions’.

This concept of ‘urban’ is a rejection of tradition to me, dis-harmony, an unnatural hierarchy, where conventional objects are simply left juxtaposed to their environment.

As urbanisation invades our existence, so do our aesthetics change.

 By using banana paper fibre, water colour washes within an urban aesthetic, I look to create a modern miniature, a microcosmic paradox of craft and technique to contextualise the status quo.

@JaniNaishadh

I was honoured to work with these artists in India, a meeting of minds to collaborate on a cross cultural programme. A project amalgam of academia and vocational arts almost a decade ago; in the Gujarati states of India amidst the echelons of academia and cross-cultural exchange. Our like minds gravitated, as a small team of professional artists working in practice and promotion, education and outreach.

We found mutual interests in celebrating the power of visual language and the ubiquity of arts as means to connect and galvanise local and international communities. We became a transient, albeit project based, community bridging the cultural, sociopolitical and geographical divides. A living testament to the commissioning brief of the programme we ran and philosophy that supported. These artists and teachers operated on a frequency that was familiar to me and my team. Their ideas and sensibilities were accessible and resonant of our work in the U.K., even though we had never met, even though they came from thousands of miles away. — ubiquity was evident. 

With whiffs of a collective consciousness hanging in the air, we delivered several programmes and began a relationship that led us here. Back home to the UK, to where it all began, deep in the market streets of West London, Portobello and Colville. These shows are the product of almost a decade of inspiration, faith, trust and respect. It is a refreshing reminder of connectivity through the arts and the power of visual language that brought us together.

With thanks to Veer Narmad South Gujarat University in 2016 - 2019. Krushnapriya, Naishadh, Rajarshi, Bhrigu and Preksha and the rest of their team. It is a great pleasure to be able to support these international artists in the UK.

Damian Rayne

Director The Muse Gallery

Woven Odyssey - Krushnapriya Smart

6-18 February,

PV 6 February 6-9pm

Krushnapriya Smart, an artist and educator well-versed in Art History and Aesthetics, stands out through captivating exhibitions and engaging workshops. Her passion encompasses teaching and curating, blending various art forms and cultural stories together.

Her “Woven Odyssey” is an immersive exhibition that delves deep into the profound and intimate journey of motherhood. Through evocative and heartfelt artistic expressions, she navigates the multifaceted experiences, emotions, and transformations that encapsulate the miraculous journey of bringing new life into the world.

Her artworks intricately weave together raw and personal moments encountered during the pivotal nine-month odyssey of pregnancy and beyond. Each piece serves as a window into the artist’s soul, capturing the intricate tapestry of emotions, physical changes, and the spiritual connection that defines the essence of motherhood.

 The exhibition unveils a series of captivating artworks that portray Krushnapriya’s first-hand experiences during pregnancy. Vividly depicted are the warming moments of discovering the heartbeat, feeling the initial movements, and the overwhelming rush of emotions accompanying this miraculous period. These artworks serve as a testament to the unique and incomparable bond between a mother and her child.

One of the exhibition’s highlights is the “Journey from Dot to Marks,” a striking portrayal that illustrates the physical and emotional metamorphosis undergone during and after childbirth. This series beautifully contains the nuances of joy and pain conveyed through symbolic representation in the artworks—each telling a profound story of maternal love.

The exhibition also delves into the uncharted territory of the postpartum period, shedding light on the rollercoaster of emotions, the delicate balance between self-care and nurturing a new-born, and the beautifully chaotic journey that defines early motherhood. The artworks here mirror her personal journey of adapting to a new routine while navigating through a whirlwind of emotions.

Moreover, she ingeniously explores the universal emotions experienced by everyone through a series of alluring cloud formations that embody love, anger, neutrality, worry, and joy—a testament to the shared emotional spectrum that unites us all.

She also portrays a touching depiction of her daughter, Kairavini, capturing the tender moments of her first attempts at communication. Those undiscovered words and letters are represented through vibrant and organic shapes. In a continuation of that artwork lies the beauty of the evolving mother-child relationship, especially in the gradual discovery of language and the heartfelt joy of being called ‘Ma,’ ‘Mumma,’ or ‘Mummy,’ presented through mesmerizing sound waves.

“Woven Odyssey” is not just an exhibition but a profound and evocative narrative that invites visitors to dive into a deeply personal and emotional voyage—a celebration of the sacred and extraordinary bond between a mother and her child, immortalized through the artist’s unparalleled creative expression using lines, dots, abstract shapes, and a variety of thread colours.

- Mudita Choudhary

@krushnapriyasmart

I was honoured to work with these artists in India, a meeting of minds to collaborate on a cross cultural programme. A project amalgam of academia and vocational arts almost a decade ago; in the Gujarati states of India amidst the echelons of academia and cross-cultural exchange. Our like minds gravitated, as a small team of professional artists working in practice and promotion, education and outreach.

We found mutual interests in celebrating the power of visual language and the ubiquity of arts as means to connect and galvanise local and international communities. We became a transient, albeit project based, community bridging the cultural, sociopolitical and geographical divides. A living testament to the commissioning brief of the programme we ran and philosophy that supported. These artists and teachers operated on a frequency that was familiar to me and my team. Their ideas and sensibilities were accessible and resonant of our work in the U.K., even though we had never met, even though they came from thousands of miles away. — ubiquity was evident. 

With whiffs of a collective consciousness hanging in the air, we delivered several programmes and began a relationship that led us here. Back home to the UK, to where it all began, deep in the market streets of West London, Portobello and Colville. These shows are the product of almost a decade of inspiration, faith, trust and respect. It is a refreshing reminder of connectivity through the arts and the power of visual language that brought us together.

With thanks to Veer Narmad South Gujarat University in 2016 - 2019. Krushnapriya, Naishadh, Rajarshi, Bhrigu and Preksha and the rest of their team. It is a great pleasure to be able to support these international artists in the UK.

Damian Rayne

Director The Muse Gallery

For the first show of 2024, we are immensely proud to welcome the Muse's three brand new Residents: James Grossman,Margarita Frančeska Loze, and Romi Thornton.

At the core of our work is the residency programme, six months of subsidised space with the chance to interact with gallery clientele, learn from professional technicians, and curators and earn from invigilating shows. Our residents will be setting up their studios and collaborating on a group show, kicking off our residency program in January, leading to a final exhibition in June. We urge you to visit the exhibition and support these emerging artists as they transition to independent careers beyond graduation.

We look forward to sharing this experience with you.

James Grossman

James Grossman is a Multidisciplinary Designer Maker, who combines his background in Product Design with his love of form and sculpture. Exploring the relationships between organic forms in the natural and digital realms. The formulation of his designs is primarily constructed through simulations and digital craftsmanship to create works incorporating themes of tactility, connection, and containment. He aims to capture obscure movement across a variety of mediums, by experimenting with advanced technologies. By doing so he plans to investigate speculative futures and inspire his audience to consider unexplored questions.

Margarita Frančeska Loze

Margarita Frančeska Loze is a recent graduate of MFA Fine Art from Kingston School of Art and is a co-founder of Conch Collective. She has been nominated for The Muse Residency 2024 and in year 2022, she was selected for the Venice Biennale Fellowship programme. The work of Margarita is a celebration of the poetics of the ordinary. Her recent work combines textile production with the use of found objects. By using a variety of mediums, such as hand-drawn stop motion, writing, embroidery and sculpture, she attempts to capture the transient nature of life and create a tangible connection to universal and personal memories. Through her experimental narrative approach, Margarita makes a dreamlike ontology, to capture the nuances of spatial, temporal and poetic navigation.

Romi Thornton

As a multimedia artist, Romi investigates the profound impact consumerism has on our sense of self. Through installation, she navigates the false promises and facades maintained by corporations. Her practice aims to shed light and provoke critical reflection on the hidden narratives in commerce by exploring the expanded role of the exhibition visitor as a quasi-consumer. One integral aspect of her work is the spurious brand Infinitech, founded by the unprincipled CEO Rosemary Barbara Thompson. The narratives embody the ergonomically alluring, yet illusory promises tech companies offer us. The spaces she creates suggest order and control. But, in leaving easter eggs for the viewer within the curations - and by recreating the peculiar and slightly off moments we experience with customer service - simulations are revealed, and pretences are broken.

Surrender to the Rhythms

Known for her intricate observations of Flora and Fauna, Louisa invites you to glimpse inside her drawing practice.
“I am beginning to develop a language of immediacy, working outside and relinquishing control to the elements and found materials: drawing with ink and grass while lying quietly in a sunny meadow, listening to nature, surrendering to the moment. 
I have spent 12 years slowly developing my practice, controlling my environment and choosing pin sharp pencils, ultra smooth paper, the right light to see and capture the things I want to share. Seducing you into my world and asking you to look a little closer at what I have noticed, always informed by my time outside as a gardener, a walker, an observer.
I’m a Collector and my studio is reminiscent of an old school nature table, reminders of my walks and the things that catch my eye. Delving into my craft roots I explore tools and techniques, sometimes for the sheer joy of solving problems. These sit in the studio waiting for their moment in the spotlight, catching my eye as I work.
But always I return to the quiet observations, moments in time delicately captured in graphite as the season dictates.”

You are invited to explore Louisa's world

“Fragile memory
A fleeting moment captured
Ephemeral touch”

‘Cry Me a River’ is an exhibition about heartbreak, weaving together emotional threads that evoke love’s labour’s lost. The center piece is a marble sculpture that Elliott carved as a personal challenge after separating from a significant relationship and navigating the rollercoaster of a new one. From this oversized carrara marble heart a series of miniature stoneware versions evolved, dubbed the ‘Don’t Ask’ series. These delicate miniature hearts that compose the series, are made from slip cast stoneware. Each heart was shattered and repaired using a modern interpretation of the ancient Japanese art of kintsugi; where broken pottery is carefully restored using gold - a symbolic representation of fracture and healing. The shattering of the hearts is recorded on film, in painstaking slow motion, echoing the fragility of the human condition. Elliott invites you in to sit on the sob sofa and rock it out to your favorite tunes.

NATIVE SPIRIT INDIGENOUS FILM FESTIVAL 2023 takes place at The Muse 269 Portobello Road W11 1LR from 6pm-10pm, Monday 23 - Sunday 29 October.

An exhibition of Indigenous Action designs by Klee Benally, film Stills by Pamela J Peters; and from Aitamaako'tamisskapi Natosi: Before the Sun (Taxam Films), will also be on display (from 12pm on Thursday 26 - Sunday 29 October)

#NSFF2023 brings a vast collection of 65+ films by international Indigenous filmmakers from all over our planet including: Diné, Cree, Métis, Anishinaabe, Māori, Kānaka Maoli, Haudenosaunee, Cherokee, Quechua, Kichwa, Aymara, Mapuche, Magar, Even, Miskito, Raramuri, St Vincent & Grenandines, Bedouin, Hazara, Atikamekw, Northern Arapaho, Eastern Shoshone, Paiute Shoshone, Amis, Migunburri, Gullibal, Yup'ik, Cup'ik, Tlingit, Inuit, Innu, Siksika, Blackfoot, Greenlandic and Mi’kma’ki.

Highlights include: Sunday matinee 2pm Aitamaako'tamisskapi Natosi: Before the Sun — An intimate and thrilling portrait of a young Siksika woman and her family on the golden plains of Blackfoot Territory, as she prepares for one of the most dangerous horse races in the world. Indian Relay rider Logan Red Crow vaults bareback from horse to horse in exhilarating races. In this male-dominated sport, victory is an uphill battle.

Image: Not Today Colonizer ©Klee Benally - Diné (Navajo) musician, traditional dancer, artist, filmmaker, & Indigenous anarchist. IndigenousAction.org

COLLAPSING NEW PEOPLE

ARTIST TALK

Sunday 22 October, 2.00 pm

Rather than the artist explaining his working practice and what the work is about, this 'talk' will use a critical response model. It will start with those attending taking time to view the work (10 – 15 minutes) developing their own views and thoughts about the work and then responding to the work on display. Given the chance to view the work and draw conclusions for themselves the participants will be invited to share these views with each other and the artist who will be present. From this basis of a shared experience an objective and critical approach to the exhibition will be developed and shared with others and the artist's own experience of the images and working practices.

_______________________________________________________________________

There is a crisis in human capital, the social, the economy and the environment and as a result there is a crisis what it takes to be human. This crisis is driven by the fragmentation of our identity and who or what we think we are. “Collapsing New People” is a series of digital collage portrait images that examine the form, nature and content of that crisis. These are portraits that are shorn of the cartesian tropes of representation, social status, kudos and binary notions of self. These are rejected as outdated and representative of a colonial, racialised, patriarchal, and socio-political series of hierarchies framed withing a capitalist paradigm. This is one that is riven violence and no longer fit for purpose.

If we are to negate these Cartesian notions of self it is understood that identity itself needs to be reframed, reappropriated and represented in ways we have yet to have the facility to comprehend. It is about placing our notions of self upon a sensorial platform, where identity is a living experience, felt rather than seen. My work uses the open grammar of collage and the potential of the digital to provide opportunities to express identity as a relational sense of self. It investigates the inherent qualities of collage and its ability to order new relationships of meaning from matter within a Cartesian value system and works towards the creation of a likeness based upon sensation, a sensorial likeness.

Portobello Film Festival

Sophie de Stempel | Nick Cash

1-17 September

PV 7 September, 6-9pm

PV 17 August, 6-9pm 

Akua Afari | Loretta Campbell | Martine Hans-Jorie | Nikolle Hellis-McIntyre

The scars of our life help form our identity, hidden or otherwise we plan to explore

this through a plethora of unique and varied styles, medium techniques, and

processes.

There are many ways of portraying scars, some all decoration to beautify the face

and body, some scars identify, some are identity scars which belong to a tribe and of

course we all have emotional scars which we carry. These are sometimes hidden

and some scars are born from trauma, physical and mental; all of this will be

investigated within our own mediums.

 @combined_efx

Akua Afari

‘And What Of Our Terribly Beautiful Open Secret?’

Akua was born in 1978 to Ghanaian immigrant parents, she lives and works in

London. Since graduating in 2D Design (2002) she has used her multidisciplinary art

foundation to concentrate on graphic design, illustration, painting and photography.

Her art works are multi-layered and sit between stories, meditations, commentary

and contemplations on the black collective experience.

The starting point for this body of work for Akua Afari’s presentation of SCARZ is the

notion that scars are indication of healing having taken place to some extent. What is

healed but still remembered, what is healed and hidden to others, what is healed and

always known, what is healed and seen and unseen, what is healed and still felt?

Loretta Campbell

‘It’s Not What It Seems’

Throughout our lives we live with our mental scars, buried deep beneath the surface

of our subconscious. A place we don’t let our minds wonder to and if we do it can

unleash so much anguish and chaos. When I look into myself, I see all the emotional

pain, at times it can feel so traumatic I run. Thrust into the havoc of my mind, visibility

is limited, how far through all the layers will my mind take me before I can get out.

How do we control our pain? Some by mental blocking, others self-inflict pain as a

form of control that the pain can’t hurt us only oneself can.

These emotional wounds often don’t cause pain straight away but can linger for

many years only surfacing by certain triggers in our lives. This phase of my work has

quite a melancholic feel, the sadness of our emotional scars that the outside world is

oblivious.

Using printed words Loretta is expressing the trauma and anguish of emotional

scars. Different recycled materials are used to create a layering effect to represent

how deep the pain goes. The dress slits represent self-harming wounds and the pain

which is hidden from all but the desire to release the pain is what we see

Martine Hans-Jorie

‘Tribe’

The work shown by Martine Hans-Jorie shows a varied body of work through the

medium of charcoal, paint, fabric, and machine stitch. The artist uses these to

explore the beauty of the marks shown in scarring, also to re-imagine the African

variety of designs for scarring.

Following her visual investigations into the Igbo tribe's practice of Ichi scarification

worn by women, Igbo men usually wear Ichi on their faces. Martine discovered that

the male tribal marks, show that they hold high social class status. Igbo men who

have Ichi décor on their face are allowed to perform various rituals and give titles to

influential group members.

After the artists painted the Gar marks which are made by the Nuer people in

southwestern Ethiopia and Sudan. (A strip of six parallel horizontal lines is drawn

across the forehead. For the women, patterns are dotted across their skins.) she

discovered she liked the scars; they were beautifully crafted and seemed to enhance

the features of the face, however this could be done with face paint or make up

nowadays.

Despite some of the negative narrative's that surround scarring and scarification, it

continues to be used in Africa and in modern western society. Tattooing is also

commonplace in Europe.

Martine suggests this is also about identity, we allow ourselves to show how

important symbols, names and images are to ourselves and have the need to

communicate this to others. "I am exploring the visual beauty of scars not just, tribal

scars but emotional and physical scars. Applying my medium through mark making,

I am imagining what emotional scars would look like and the journey from the first

wound, the healing process, and the outcome of the perceived experience."

Nikolle Hellis-McIntyre

‘Beauty within the Scarz’

Once your spirit is broken then everything falls apart. A joyful heart is good

medicine, but a crushed spirit dries up the bones. Most of us through life have

experienced scarring in one way or another. The scars that linger could be physical

or emotional or both, on our body or in our mind. Scars are like road maps of our

life, they show where we’ve been and where we are going and sometimes, we don’t

go anywhere for a long time. Just stuck. Not moving. Not healing.

But if we’re lucky enough to be able to heal, to close the wounds, there can be a

celebration of life after the scars have healed.

Nikolle’s work expresses the celebration of life after the scars have healed. Through

experimentation of media, painting, collage and digital she creates art that is

colourful and bold, of women who collectively have all been scarred in some way.

Whether through procedures, chemicals that woman put on their skin to lighten

themselves, to self-harming and abusiveness from others.

Symrath K Patti

Artist Statement

When I started this work the flow of mark making started shaping the images, charcoal smooth brittle black with shades of grey appeared in the form of eyes.. The density of lines was deep black Ink rolled on flat glass absorbed onto white paper lines scribbled shapes appeared. Wanting to expand on an idea of language and gender-neutral relationships. I was asking, where are the equalities between the sexes and how does it manifest in my experience through scripture and our everyday engagement within culture?

It’s the entanglement in the language of the senses that it starts with embodiment a play on our being through emotions and transcendence. The emotions maybe about love, anger, violence, hate in our collectiveness where the body holds the emotions and shapes our being. I articulate the experience through the space of the wounded in us, women, and men, it bleeds through shadows of my being sensing the pain I carry as the Other in me.

I use materials such as henna, my wedding sari, my mother’s embroidered garments, just marking her struggles and her prayers and my father’s pain and his prayers, growing up within the Sikh faith and the experience of marriage, not just mine, but within the community.

There’s love that transcends into accepting our frailty as human. We our taught that there is no separation between men and women. He surrenders to the guru and his persona to her, the goddess “Bhagautee” it is through her that he trancends and she is supposed to embrace him to eternity till the hunter in him is tamed, his ego melts where he embraces the goddess, surrendering to her. But somewhere within all the poetic beauty of message through the scriptures, the reality is difficult to

hold. It is difficult to fathom this image in a dominate colonial, patriarchal, racist, and sexist society. For me this is an ongoing project. It is representation from the imagination a metaphorical journey that’s a play on the transcendence through my engagement with the scriptures and culture and my subjectivity in it. In my imagination there is no stillness the object is moving capturing a moment where memory continues to shift and change. Like the camera it captures moments that are shifting speaking to us drawing us into a mindscape, a metamorphosis transiting into extension of vision which engages us through race location and where the body mirrors a pool of subliminal intervention through which we create a sense of being in which images carry us. Everything is moving shifting changing and living.

Throughout making this work I have questioned the notion of the gaze, who’s gaze do we perform too? Who do we carry as part of our ancestral histories beside our families? As I have said this is an ongoing project. She is the subject that has been objectified through history. In the Gurbani words empower women and endanger men perhaps but duality of the reality we live in culturally is very patriarchal.

Matthew Dardart

Lauren Goldie

Khrystyna Khmil

Eleni Maragaki

Private View Thursday, June 1st, 6- 9 pm

A group show by

Joanna Ciechanowska, Caroline Gregory, Gosia Łapsa-Malawska, Ania Assadi Sabet, Danuta Sołowiej, Rory Watson, Natalia Zagorska - Thomas

Joanna Ciechanowska 

'Broken Toys, Small Life Gone'. 

Warsaw, a long time ago. Imagine, a little girl playing with her cousins. A man walks into the room to help them with their game and rolls up his sleeves. She sees a strange number on his arm… ‘What’s that?’ she asks. ‘Nothing..’ the sleeve comes down. Her cousin whispers; ‘He got it in the camp…’ Oh, the camp...She dreams of a fire, baking potatoes, the forrest, the fun, the scouts, games, the summer camp… So, she tattoos all her dolls. Her mother throws them out. She is left with one doll she couldn’t tattoo, the black one. Years later, at the funeral of a man with a tattoo who was family member, she learns that he was one of the children dr.Mengele experimented on, in Auschwitz. His twin brother died in the camp. He survived with one lung. 'This pastel was created when my daughter was diagnosed with a genetic illness SMA1 and died at the age of 2,5.  

'Offering'.                                                                                                                 

The trauma never leaves you, one lives in a shadow.  Sometimes I wonder what I could offer to God, if I had a choice, to save a child's life. Remembering the film 'Sophie's Choice' and CS Lewis 'A grief observed'.

Caroline Gregory 

'Flesh Blood Felt and lycra' 

Sensing through skin, history swathes, whispers, feels, a longing from inside, clothed in trauma, reaching, stretching, hanging and trailing and dragging through generations. 

Gosia Łapsa-Malawska 

Perfect imperfections. Finding beauty in fractures life bring us. Mentally and physically…  we must celebrate the scars of life, embrace our imperfections, and observe the beauty that they reveal by their own.

Scars … silence and manifest. Marking painful incident in a beautiful way. Drawing a story of your life. 

The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places.” Ernest Hemingway ‘A farewell to Arms’

Ania Sabet 

Memory is flickering.

It was a dream with glistening beaches, multicolour seas and weird creatures.

until we were woken up by the sound of a single gun shot.

Black volume, war, chaos, tear gas, and death filled the air that then froze and stayed.

The air we breathed replaced sense with non-sense….and the more I tried to untangle myself the more lost I was.

 I run in all directions, so many directions…but the only space I could find to hide were the clouds of my mind….no one could imprison me there…so I stayed.

They said Art is not in this new nonsensicalness.

At least the art that bites the absurd shape of their reality.

Perhaps beyond the black veils there is another universe.

I searched, climbed, tumbled and nearly drowned to get there.

Remember! Art is not…is not….not…..no

But medicine might be if only as a way to heal myself.

Many years went by until I picked up a brush and realised

Art is.

In all its contours, configurations and angels….In all its is and is nots

Art is.

Everything finally made sense.

I was free again.

Danuta Sołowiej

Scars bear the traces of interventions, for better or worse.  Some are inflicted, others self-imposed.  We can choose to show them off or to camouflage.  They can be seen as a marker of time but they are not constant.  Attempts at capturing these transformative moments lie behind my work in this exhibition.  

Rory Watson 

Rory Watson’s paintings operate in the space between abstraction and figuration. Behind a curtain of colour-blindness, faces are deconstructed, unmasking the figure underneath. As Order meets chaos, paint battles and blends over the canvas, attempting to portray the emotional expression under the skin.

Natalia Zagorska - Thomas 

A scene from the movie Shirley Valentine: a handsome Greek fisherman is undressing Shirley as the waves rock his boat gently to and fro. 

Removing her dress he says something like ”a woman should never be ashamed of her scars and stretch marks, they are beautiful, they say that she has really lived, that she has survived…” Shirley looks directly at the camera: “Don’t men talk a lot of crap?!” 

Well, that’s as it may be but scars are beautiful. They are a form of cartography, a detailed, living map of a uniquely personal journey drawn directly onto the skin.

Private View Thursday, April 6th, 6 - 9 pm.

We are delighted to welcome back The Free Painters and Sculptors for their third exhibition at The Muse Gallery.

This exciting group of artists has enjoyed huge success with two London Ultra Exhibitions at the Bargehouse in 2018 and 2019 and includes award-winning artists from various countries.

Subtlety blends with vibrancy in this accomplished collection, where beauty interacts with thought-provoking. From a majestic Butterfly sculpture previously seen at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition (2018), through large statement canvases, sculptures, prints and drawings, to exquisite tiny ink studies on paper, there is a thoughtfulness and cohesiveness inherent in the exhibition.

The 20 exhibiting artists are Alexandra Harley, Caroline Cary, Dijana Bekalac, Gabriel Parfitt, Helen Twigge-Molecey, Henryk Terpilowski, Joanna Ciechanowska, Laura Obon, Leila Godden, Louisa Crispin, Malgorzata Lapsa-Malawska, Maria Kaleta, Michael Hempstead, Nicholas Cheeseman, Owen Legg, Peter Murry, Richard Heys, Rosalind Barker, Sally Ward, and Veronica van Eijk.

FPS is an established artist-led organisation that promotes and exhibits a talented international membership of Painters, Sculptors, Printmakers and Photographers at renowned central London galleries and elsewhere once or twice a year.

With over 70 years of experience, FPS helps artists build long-term networks that develop artistic sustainability, exposure and sales, whilst also encouraging artists to create work on their own terms....and therefore be ‘free’.

Established in 1952, FPS was originally associated with the ICA (Institute of Contemporary Arts). Founding members featured many high profile and influential artists, including Roy Rasmussen, Lyall Watson and Maurice Jadot who all feature in the permanent Tate Collection.

FPS originally came to prominence by playing a significant part in the establishment of abstract art in the 1950’s and 60’s and were the first of a number of post war movements that freed artists from the orthodoxy of rigid and purely technical judgements.

This ethos continues today and we welcome applications from talented artists at all stages of their career.