Mabon

Mabon

In many traditions, time is considered to be cyclical

rather than straight line. Perceived as a perpetual

cycle of growth and retreat tied to the Sun’s annual

death and rebirth. This cycle is also viewed as a

micro and macrocosm of broader life cycles in an

immeasurable series of rotations composing the

Universe. The days that fall on the landmarks of the

yearly cycle traditionally mark the beginnings and

middle-points of the four seasons.

‘Mabon’ is the first in a series of Anima Mundi

online mixed exhibitions following this rhythm of

the seasons, known as ‘the wheel of the year’. This

‘calendar’ provides a cue for the duration of each

show, and inevitably, albeit not deliberately, fla-

vours the selection of works presented.

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“Sunrise Chant Hail sun, light and arc, fight again

against the dark!”

Diana Rajchel

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David Kim Whittaker (b. 1964)

Most of David Kim Whittaker’s paintings are

based upon a metaphysical interpretation

of the human head. These portrait portals,

are often ambiguous, with the aim of

representing the totality of the human

condition - both the universal and the

empathetic alongside personal experience.

The works often juggle dual states of inner

and outer calm and conflict, offering a glimpse

of simultaneous strength and fragility,

conscious and subconscious, masculine and

feminine. The paintings express Whittaker’s

constant focus on an attempt to express

something far greater than oneself. Recent

works depict the artists deep sensitivity

and increasing unease when confronted

with the compounding global tensions of

this particlar moment. A dual reflection of

hope and warning stares back at us from

the frame.

Whittaker is a British artist born in

Cornwall where he still resides. Exhibitions

have been held internationally, notably

including a major solo exhibition at

the prestigious Fondazione Mudima in

Milan in 2017. Works are in numerous

museum collections, art foundations and

international private collections. Whittaker

was further acknowledged in 2011 as the

recipient of the Towry Award (First Prize) at

the National Open Art Competition.

‘The Sisters : Figure of the Nocturns’

oil on acrylic on panel, 76 x 76 cm

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Antony Micaleff (b. 1975)

Antony Micallef is a British contemporary

artist working in London, UK.

He first appeared on the British art

scene after becoming a prize winner of

the BP Portrait Award competition at the

National Portrait Gallery. Since then,

his oevre fused political imagery with

contemporary expressionism winning him

worldwide acclaim. Described as a Modern

Expressionist, Micallef roots his visually

charged figurative paintings in the

fields of social commentary and physical

and metaphysical self-examination in

the search to capture something of the

human condition. In his more recent

works, he builds up a substantial

relief-like surface with extensive paint

mass sited upon a benign background.

By using significant layering, and heavy

impasto, the materiality of his medium

is pushed to its extreme, blurring

the boundaries between painting

and sculpture.

Micaleff was notably taught by the painter

John Virtue, who was in turn taught by

Frank Auerbach. He has been selected

as one of Louis Vuitton’s ‘Visionaries’

and is currently taking part in a world

tour showcasing his work. His paintings

features in private and public collections

across the world, with work exhibited

in exhibitions in institutions including

The National Portrait Gallery, The Royal

Academy, Tate Britain and the ICA.

‘Constructing Auras with Red and Ochre

oil with beeswax on canvas, 40 x 40 x 30 cm

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Henry Hussey (b. 1990)

Henry Hussey’s artworks are often

emotionally and physically raw, yet

contrastingly beautiful and intricate, created

with force through often paradoxically

laboured mediums, including textile,

glass, ceramic, paint and film. Whether

through an expanding vocabulary of quasimythological

symbols, or in embellished

lines of text extracted from performative

situations, Hussey explores personal and

national identity in response to aggravating

relationships and events. Recent

experimentations reveal a deep concern

with control and chaos and the sweet spot

in between these two distinctive states.

Henry Hussey is a British artist born in

London in 1990 where he still resides.

Hussey studied Textiles at Chelsea College

of Art before completing an MA in Textiles

at the Royal College of Art. His work is

widely respected and has been exhibited

in notable exhibitions including The

Textiel Biennale 2017 at Museum Rijswijk

in the Hague, a solo presentation at Art

Central in Hong Kong, the Bloomberg New

Contemporaries in 2014 at the Institute of

Contemporary Art in London, the Royal

Academy London and Volta New York and

the Young Talent Contemporary Prize at

the Ingram Collection in 2016. Hussey has

participated in residencies at La Vallonea,

Tuscany, Italy in 2018 and participated

in a residency at Palazzo Monti, Milan

in 2020. His work is held in collections

worldwide including Simmons & Simmons,

Hogan Lovells, The Groucho Club and

Soho House.

‘Prometheus Bound’ / ‘Joan’

oil-based monotype on paper, 42 x 30 cm

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‘Judas’ / ‘Wound Man’

oil-based monotype on paper, 42 x 30 cm

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Judith Nangala Crispin (b. 1970)

Judith Nangala Crispin is an Australian visual

artist, poet and musician, and a descendant of

Bpangerang people of North East Victoria. Her

skin name, Nangala, was given to her by the

Warlpiri people of the remote Tanami Desert

in northern Australia, a place she has lived

for a few months each year for over a decade.

Her work includes themes of displacement

and identity loss, a reflection on her ancestry,

but it is primarily centred on the concept of

connection with the land. This work forms

a part of Crispin’s ongoing series depicting

the transcendent ascending forms of recently

deceased fauna. Crispin’s camera-less method

of photography incorporates a range of

processes. Her own developed alternative

process of ‘lumachrome glass printing’,

combines elements of lumen printing, cliché

verre, chemical alchemy and drawing. She

works within a mobile geodesic dome which

functions as a giant lens where light streams

penetrate its plastic walls. The mobility of

her studio allows her to go to the site of her

subject, prior to respectful burial. The muse,

is raised onto a plastic box, rested on special

photographic paper for up to 50 hours as the

passage of sun and moonlight exposes its

posthumous portrait. Each work is viewed as

a collaboration with nature, where honouring

the subject is a key objective. In each work

the animals are diaphanous where light has

literally passed through their bodies. They

appear drawn in a primitive motion by a

slipstream of spirit, levitating in a space of

brooding luminosity that appears sentient

and wholly focused on the task of enfolding

each creature back into its care. The result

offers a profound sense of what lies beyond.

Nangala Crispin has published a collection of

poetry, The Myrrh-Bearers (Sydney: Puncher

& Wattmann, 2015), and a book of images and

poems made while living with the Warlpiri,

The Lumen Seed (New York: Daylight Books,

2017). She is a member of Oculi collective, one

of the chapter leads of Women Photograph

(Sydney), and was the 2021 Artist in residence

with Music Viva. She is also the Poetry

Editor for The Canberra Times. She has

also directed and worked on two major

social justice research projects – The Julfa

Project, which preserved photographic

records of a destroyed Armenian cemetery

and digitally reconstructed the site from

new and existing images; and Kurdiji 1.0, an

Aboriginal suicide prevention app, which

strengthens resilience in young indigenous

people by reconnecting them with community

and culture. Nangala Crispin work has been

exhibited internationally.

‘On a night of meteor showers and lit uranium mines, Jeremy, released from his chickenhawk body by

a passing truck, unfolds his thousand-eyed wings.’

Lumachrome glass print, cliche-verre, chemigram, drawing. Roadkilled chickenhawk, sand,

vegemite, household and decomposition chemicals, rodinal, graphite, biro, bromide, wax, and

marbles on Fomapan fibre paper. Exposed 47 hours in rainlight in a geodesic dome, 130 x 82 cm

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Tim Shaw (b. 1964)

Tim Shaw RA’s sculpture is often dualistic,

incorporating current affairs, societal

complexity and human conflict with

ancient, mythical, metaphysical and primal

concerns. Shaw’s powerful oeuvre connects

these elements to create wider, timeless

portraits of humanity. The tension between

ancient past and a prosaic presence,

between solidity and breakdown, becomes

an organic part of his worldview, whether

he’s looking at human transgression or the

enlightenment of primitive ritual.

Shaw is a British artist, born in Belfast, he

currently lives in Cornwall. He was elected

an Academician at The Royal Academy

in 2013 and made a Fellow of The Royal

British Society of Sculptors and a Fellow

of Falmouth University the same year.

Shaw has had a number of significant solo

shows throughout the UK, Ireland and

internationally. Most recently the major

public solo exhibitions ‘What Remains’

and ‘Something is Not Quite Right’ a

collaboration between The Exchange and

Anima-Mundi, ‘Mother the Air is Blue,

The Air is Dangerous’ was held in the F.E

McWilliam Gallery in Northern Ireland,

‘Black Smoke Rising’ toured from Mac

Birmingham to Aberystwyth Arts Centre

and Back From the Front presents: Shock

and Awe – Contemporary Artists at War

and Peace at the Royal West of England

Academy. He has undertaken a number of

public commissions including ‘The Rites

of Dionysus’ for The Eden Project, ‘The

Minotaur’ for The Royal Opera House and

‘The Drummer’ for Lemon Quay, Truro.

A more political side to his work became

evident in a number of sculptures responding

to the issues of terrorism and The Iraq War.

‘Tank on Fire’ was awarded the selectors

prize at the inaugural Threadneedle Prize

in 2008 and the installation ‘Casting a

Dark Democracy’ was reviewed in 2008

by Jackie Wullschlager of The Financial

Times as ‘The most politically charged

yet poetically resonant new work on show

in London’. Shaw has been supported by

the Kappatos Athens Art Residency, The

Kenneth Armitage Foundation, The British

School of Athens,The Delfina Studio Trust

through residencies in Greece, Spain and a

fellowship in London. Most recently as an

Artist Fellow at the Kate Hamburger Centre

for Advance Study in the Humanities of

‘Law and Culture’ In Bonn, Germany where

he began work on ’The Birth of Breakdown

Clown’ an existential sculptural work

utilising sculpture, robotics and AI.

‘We Remain at the Mercy of Nature (Figure I)’

bronze (edition of 9), 74 cm (H)

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‘We Remain at the Mercy of Nature (Figure II)’


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‘We Remain at the Mercy of Nature (Figure III)’


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John Robinson (b. 1981)

John Robinson’s technical prowess could be

seen to be shared with the great pantheon

of masters of the 17th and 18th centuries

including artists such as Diego Velazquez

and Francisco Goya with a developing

unguarded focus on self portraiture adopted

by the likes of Rembrandt Van Rijn or more

recently Frida Kahlo. However Robinson’s

figurative works offer a contemporary

subversion of the rich tradition of self

portraiture. Somber protagonists dominate

the canvas, usually presented in theatrical

situations which barely mask a more

prosaic ‘kitchen sink’ vulnerability. They

are often simultaneously absurdly comic

and psychologically revealing. Robinson’s

process often involves private performance,

where his actions are then exquisitely

rendered, in oil on canvas. For Robinson

these paintings embrace personal concern,

disclosure and catharsis, for the voyeur

the experience appears both elaborately

grandiose and awkwardly revealing.

Robinson was born in Worcester, UK where

he still resides. He studied Fine Art at

Falmouth College of Arts, spending most

of the time whilst there skipping tutorials

to travel to Plymouth to be taught by the

notorious and idiosyncratic painter Robert

Lenkiewicz. Robinson was awarded the

Richard Ford Scholarship by the Royal

Academy of Arts and spent a summer as

artist in residence at the Prado Museum

Madrid absorbing the works of Velazquez

and Goya. He stayed in Madrid for a

further decade broken by a year at Central

Saint Martins on a Masters degree in fine

art. He later developed his duel use of

‘the painting’ as revelation and disguise;

‘self portrait as (other…)’. Robinson has

exhibited internationally. He has won

the Peter Spicer Award for Excellence

in Creative Arts (First Place), Richard

Ford Award for Painting, Royal Academy,

London (First Place), South Square Trust

Scholarship for MA study at Byam Shaw

school of Art, Central Saint Martins,

London, Alfa Romeo Award Art (‘Best of

show nominee’) Madrid, Spain, Premio

de Pintura Focus-Abengoa, Seville, Spain

(Winner) and the Hauser and Wirth Prize,

Hauser and Wirth Somerset UK, (First

Prize). Works are held in notable collections

including University of the Arts London

permanent collection, London, UK, Nicolas

& Maxinne Leslau collection, London,

UK, Focus-Abengoa Foundation, Seville,

Spain, Coldwell Banker, Madrid, Spain,

Falmouth College of Arts Library, Falmouth

UK, Museo del Ferrocarril, Madrid, Spain,

Stedlijk Museum Amsterdam Netherlands,

Wellcome Collection London UK, British

Council Collection UK.

‘Heaven All Over My Face’

oil on canvas, 180 x 150 cm

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David Cooper (b. 1972)

“There are acts of terror that can’t be ignored or

cleared from the mind. These ‘War Hed’s’ came

about following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

In this series destruction is the making. Clay, a

simple medium from the ground, moulded with

taped hands, and bitten, to sculpt the brutal

yet fragile pieces. Biting the clay became

symbolic of an act of unarmed survival.”

David Cooper’s work deals with disorder.

His work is examined inside out, and outside

in, through a series of unpremeditated and

intuitive processes. The works inquire into

a humanity that feels, fears and confronts

restriction and control; a state of being

often conducive to an abominable sense

of desolation and fettered anxiety. These

unknown (and unknowable) aspects of the

human condition, driven by momentary

absences of restraint, structure and

control are embodied. Broken happenings,

motivated by instinct, assemblage

techniques and random thoughts, naivety

and energy are exploited to sculpt the

identity of these unfathomable aspects of

human experience.

David Cooper was born in Wakefield, West

Yorkshire in 1972. He currently lives and

works in Suffolk. Cooper studied Fashion

at John Moores University followed by an

MA in Fashion Design at Central Saint

Martins where he went on to become

lead designer and head of menswear at

Alexander McQueen. More recently Cooper

attended Fine Art summer school at the

Slade School of Fine Art in 2008. Works

have been exhibited extensively in the UK.

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‘War Hed (1)’

clay, 20 x 19 x 17 cm

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‘War Hed (2)’

clay, 32 x 20 x 16 cm

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GL Brierley (b. 1964)

In GL Brierley’s pictorial stages, we often

witness simultaneously seductive and

grotesque themes tilting over and collapsing

into a sort of pantomime-like comedy.

In addition to their representational

quality, paint remains paint as material

oscillating between a form of abstraction

and figuration. Brierley symbolically plays

with the term ‘base-matter’ as a word rooted

in the term ‘mater’, which also means

‘mother’ in Latin and Greek, gracefully

fusing two concepts: object and desire. Her

exquisite oil paintings feature individual

subjects, often appearing engaged in

dialogue, positioned alongside fragments

that perhaps resemble still life. The paint

appears corporeal, organic and almost

living, congealing as a result of technical

alchemy, casting ambiguous folds in a

unique materiality which simultaneously

demonstrates a virtuosic use of light and

shade. All pictorial elements are given the

same ornamental treatment, which means

that the viewer’s gaze freely roams across

the entire image: filigree inlays in sharp

angular shapes are applied, simulating a

floor covering that may appear abruptly

foreshortened. Broad brushstrokes rich

in contrast generate a figurative element,

perhaps punctuated with parasitic colour

sequences that freely resembles an

imaginary covering or garment. In sharp

contrast, thick applications of colour dot

the surface here and there in an almost

violent act of embellishment. Brierley’s

paintings serve as a stage for diverse

forms of reconciliation and transformation

between the male and female, mind and

material, body and object.

GL Brierley is a British artist based in

London. GL Brierley. She completed her

Masters in visual arts at the College of Art

in London and graduated with an M.F.A.

from Goldsmith College, London. Her

works have been presented in numerous

exhibition internationally. And are placed in

renowned cas numerous private collections.

‘Untitled (1)’

oil on panel, 30 x 40 cm

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‘Untitled (2)’

oil on paper, 28 x 38 cm

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David Quinn (b. 1971)

Working on several pieces at once, David

Quinn’s studio is an intimate, white,

rectangular space where small scale, interrelated

yet instinctively painted works, hang

in line or grid. Each piece a self contained

unit, both unique and yet part of a greater

whole, as if individual words as part of

a sentence, notes in a tune or hours in a

day. What at first glance appears simple,

minimal and understated, reveals itself

upon closer inspection to be multilayered

and imbued with quiet complexity, where

a unique history is accumulated, built

like strata in sedimentary rock. A finished

painting is the summary of the process of

its creation: a concentrated form or essence,

containing both purity and imperfection,

each tablet a poetic palimpsest, considered

by Quinn as a marker of time, spent

in contemplation - akin perhaps to a

physical embodiment of meditation or

a prayer.

David Quinn was born in Dublin, Ireland

in 1971 and currently lives and works in

Shillelagh, County Wicklow. His paintings

have been exhibited internationally and

can be found in collections worldwide.

‘Cloghan (1)’

mixed media on panel, 21.5 x 13.5 cm

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‘Cloghan (3)’


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‘Cloghan (3)’


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Kate Clark (b. 1972)

Kate Clark’s sculptures invite the viewer to

experience an instinctive and primal reaction,

that encourages further examination of our

own humanity. Stitched over a hand-sculpted

human face, the material quality of her ethically

sourced animal hide brings an authenticity to

the final sculpture, through what the artist

describes as a unique energy and presence.

We identify with animals through both our

connection with and separation from them.

Recognising these contradictions, Clark’s

fusion of human and animal suggests that our

human condition is fully realised only when

we acknowledge and reconcile our current

state and our natural instincts, acknowledging

the animalistic inheritance within the human

condition. She achieves this through emphasis

on the characteristics that differentiate us

from the rest of the animal kingdom, and,

importantly, the ones that unite us.

Kate Clark lives and works in Brooklyn, New

York. She attended Cornell University for her

BFA and Cranbrook Academy of Art for her

MFA and has been awarded fellowships from the

Jentel Artists Residency in Wyoming, The Fine

Arts Work Center Residency in Provincetown,

MA, and the Marie Walsh Sharpe Studio

Program in New York. Clark was nominated

for a USA Fellowship, a Louis Comfort Tiffany

Award and an American Academy of Arts

and Letters award. She was awarded a grant

from The Virginia Groot Foundation in 2013

and a New York Foundation For the Arts

(NYFA) Fellowship Award in 2014. Clark has

exhibited in solo museum exhibitions at the

Mobile Museum of Art, The Newcomb Art

Museum and the Hilliard Museum and in group

museum exhibitions at the Aldrich Museum of

Contemporary Art, The Islip Art Museum, and

The Bellevue Arts Museum, MOFA: Florida

State University, Cranbrook Art Museum, Frist

Center for the Visual Arts, The Winnepeg Art

Gallery, the Glenbow Museum, the Musée de

la Halle Saint Pierre, Paris, The Art Gallery at

Cleveland State University, the Hudson Valley

Center for Contemporary Art, the Nevada

Museum of Art, the David Winton Bell Gallery

at Brown University, the Bemis Center for

Contemporary Arts, the Biggs Museum of

American Art, the Royal Melbourne Institute

of Technology, and the J. Paul Getty Museum.

Her work is collected internationally and is in

public collections such as the JP Morgan Chase

Art Collection, the 21c Collection, the David

Roberts Art Foundation and the C-Collection

in Switzerland. Clark’s sculptures have been

featured in the Wall Street Journal, New

York Times, New York Magazine, Art21:Blog,

The Village Voice, PAPERmag, The Atlantic,

Hyperallergic, NYArts, Huffington Post, Hi

Fructose, the BBC World News Brazil, Hey!

Magazine, Time Out, ID Paris, Cool Hunting,

Wallpaper, Creators Project/VICE, Sculpture

Review and many other publications.

In addition she was filmed by National

Geographic in her studio over a 2 month

period for a short documentary about her work.

‘The Sisters’ Embrace’

coyote hide, foam, clay, pins, thread, rubber eyes, 122 x 89 x 36 cm

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Massimo Angei (b. 1962)

Massimo Angèi’s elemental, tempestuous

yet ethereal oil paintings reflect varied

emotional states whilst remaining open to

physical and metaphysical interpretation.

Tableaus and forms are suggested but

never fully established, perhaps evoking

landscape, weather patterns, natural

systems, inner psychology or spiritual

connectedness. Voluptuous cloud-like

billows intersperse with delicate spiralling

marks forming an ecstatic unity reminiscent

of both renaissance grandeur and primitive

automatic drawing.

Massimo Angèi was born in La Spezia, Italy,

he currently lives and works in Sarzana,

near the borderline between Liguria

and Tuscany. Following art school, he

collaborated with various institutions and

museums exhibiting early representational

depictions of flora and fauna. After finishing

his degree at the Fine Arts Academy in

Carrara/Painting (Accademia di Belle

Arti\Pittura), he participated in his first

exhibitions, and the creation of the Idioma

group along with Marco Casentini, Fabio

Linari, Jacopo Bruno, Andrea Geremia.

He then began to work as an independent

freelance photographer working for photo

agencies including Grazia Neri of Milan,

and Bilderberg of Hamburg, publishing his

images in both Italian and international

magazines. A vivid dream in the spring of

2006 made him realise that his destiny was

as a painter, and he vowed to never again

abandon it.

‘Ricordi confusi (Confused Memories)’

oil on board, 47 x 40 cm

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‘Linee solide e tenere (Solid and Tender Lines)’


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‘Odore di ruggine (Smell of Rust)’


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Alice Ellis Bray (b. 1994)

Alice Ellis-Bray is an artist from Lamorna

in Cornwall. She works with self made

costume, painting, performance and

script to explore the infinite possibilities

of identity and experience. Through

learning the properties of nature and the

nature of people, Bray seeks to portray

an interconnectedness she feels with all

things. Painting has assisted her as a tool

to transmute stubborn emotions laying

dormant within, painting the strength

she seeks in the eyes of her paintings,

helping her to find a way through life with

painting as her remedy. With her oeuvre

she has created something of a temple

to mythical women, using arch-shaped

boards tinged with gold in an allusion to

religious iconography, which frame ‘selfie’,

‘alter -ego’, subjects that are either direct

references to well-known figures, looser

notions of the primitive.

Alice Ellis-Bray has exhibited her work

widely, most recently at Tate St Ives.

She has also taught at a number of art

galleries and schools including Newlyn

Art Gallery, Tate St Ives and CAST in

Helston, Cornwall. She was selected as an

‘Artist to Watch’ by Elephant Magazine in

August 2022.

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‘I am the Stone’

oil and 23.5ct gold on board , 44 x 30 cm

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‘Selfie Under the Elder’


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‘Selfie in Eden’


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Andy Harper (b. 1971)

Andy Harper’s intricate oil paintings deal

with the fruits of labour in the shadow of

uncertainty. On one side they are concerned

with the immediate process of painting, the

mechanical, almost automated act of laying

down mark after mark on a wet surface. On

the other hand, they are subject to longterm

strategy, each mark developed over

time and embedded into a composition that

provides an architectural structure for the

work. While this framework may be logically

ordered, the marks themselves are organic

entities, forming a broad visual library that

has taken on a life its own, growing through

repetition and recombination in each new

work. The paintings act like a Petri-dish for

the culturing of this visual language, and a

greenhouse for its cultivation. The forms may

seem organic, but upon closer inspection

they are not specific to anything the natural

world has to offer. Rather they appear

as a synthetic form of nature, generated

from compulsive repetition and subjective

reinterpretation, a world that has somehow

evolved beyond the point of progeny to

become its own independent alien entity.

Andy Harper lives in St Just, the most

westerly town in Cornwall and works from a

studio at the renowned Porthmeor Studios

in St Ives. He studied his BA in Fine

Art: Painting & Printmaking at Brighton

Polytechnic and then MA Fine Art: Painting

at the Royal College of Art, London. In

1996, with some peers from the RCA, Harper

co-founded NotCut which ran a studio and

photographic darkroom in London and

curated ‘Lightness & Weight’ in Birmingham.

During this time he also studied part time

at Middlesex University for an MA in Visual

Culture and had his first solo exhibition

in London in 1998. After attending the

Braziers International Artist Workshop in

2000, Harper became a member of the

organising committee until 2008. Harper

has taught in many institutions nationally

and internationally, and had teaching posts

at Central St. Martins, The City Lit and

is currently a Senior Lecturer on the

MFA Fine Art programme at Goldsmiths,

University of London. Harper has exhibited

widely in Europe, North America and

South Korea.

‘Staghorn’

oil on linen, 90 x 122 cm

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Simon Averill (b. 1961)

Albert Einstein’s ‘spooky action at a

distance’ theory referred to the subject of

‘quantum entanglement’. This principle

has inspired this ongoing series of paired

paintings by Simon Averill. Quantum

entanglement is a physical phenomenon

which occurs when pairs or groups of

particles are generated, interact, or share

spatial proximity in ways such that the

quantum state of each particle cannot be

described independently of the state of

the other(s), even when the particles are

separated by a large distance—instead, a

quantum state must be described for the

system as a whole. Physicist and feminist

theorist Karen Barad coined the term

‘intra-action’ to describe the concept of

‘entanglement’, (not only of fundamental

particles but of all material, matter, of nature

and of meaning). There is a distinction to be

made between intra-action and interaction;

when bodies interact they retain a degree

of independence, each entity existed before

the encounter. When intra-action occurs

individuals materialise and agency emerges

from within the relationship not outside of

it. These works further enhance Averill’s

reputation for attempting to record elusive,

transitory yet fundamental phenomena.

Produced through a multi layered, process

of glazing where methodical and repetitive

series’ of motifs, are used to describe

intangible potentials.

Simon Averill is a British artist born in

Brighton, England in 1961. He currently

lives and works near Marazion in West

Cornwall. Averill studied Fine Art

at Brighton Polytechnic and graduated

with Honours. In 1986 he established a

Printmaking Workshop near Penzance,

Cornwall, which he ran until 1990. He

has been a member of the Newlyn Society

of Artists since the late 1980s. Averill

has exhibited widely with exhibitions in

the UK, Europe and USA including the

Royal Academy of Arts Summer Show,

The Discerning Eye exhibition at the Mall

Galleries, Royal West of England Academy

in Bristol, Sherborne House, Plymouth

Museum, Plymouth Arts Centre, Truro

Museum, Falmouth Art Gallery, Newlyn Art

Gallery and the Festival Hall in Chicago,

USA. He has had 12 exhibitions and

won the Wells Art Contempory painting

prize in 2020.

‘Entanglements’

acrylic on panel, 40 x 40 cm each

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Amy Gillian Wilson (b. 1997)

“I used to be a woman who knew how to

make things out as I saw them, but I have

since committed the pathetic error of

thinking. Wanting to understand was one

of the worst things to have happened to me.

I care too much about the utter darkness,

the void of unfulfillment, to receive and eat

back the lives that have been tossed forth

from the womb to fail, to kiss and bestow

them all a second chance. I’m sending my

true love back to the bitch that bore you.

She is the world-generating spirit who all

creatures rise through: space, time, and

causality – the shell of the cosmic egg.

She is the enticement that budged the

self-brooding absolute to the act of creation.

All information inside her is systematized

around an enigma invisible even in its most

private nucleus. I’m handing you a world

on fire. I’ve given up on figuring out how

to figure things out. Every lure seems to be

an expanding vortex. Fear comes from what

surpasses me, and I fear myself becomes

I’m always ready to suffer. To protect me

who persecutes me, I’ll float in emptiness

and become air, energetic air, or maybe I’ll

be more like an instant of air. Yes, I want

to be an instant. Rather than a soul in a

body, I’ll be a body in a soul.” - Amy Gillian

Wilson, 2021

Amy Gillian Wilson was born in Boston,

Massachusetts in 1997. Her interdisciplinary

approach consists of sculpture, painting,

installation, writing, video and performance.

She earned her undergraduate degree

from the School of the Art Institute of

Chicago and is currently completing the

Masters of Fine Arts program in Ceramics

at Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield

Hills, Michigan. She has exhibited her

artwork widely in the USA and beyond.

‘I Opened Myself And You Were Born For You Yourself’

mixed media wall hanging, 90 x 61 cm

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Luke Hannam (b. 1966)

Luke Hannam describes his work as the

result of an ‘ordered chaos’ where poetic

paintings are made ‘in the eye of the storm’,

where creativity spins wildly, through bursts

of impulse around a silent meditative deep

well of meaning. Ideas emerge out of an

energetic dedication to drawing and a

relentless desire to explore images and

motifs. His work is instantly recognisable

through his strong punch of colour and

definite use of line which weaves its way

sensuously across the surface, denoting both

the delicacy and strength of the form and

spirit of the subject. Hannam’s paintings

expressively offer a singular view on how

what he sees, how he thinks and pivotally

how he feels about the human condition and

what lies beyond our materiality. His work

could be seen to continue the Romantic

tradition, embracing reality and mysticism

with the wonder of experience.

Luke Hannam was born in 1966 and currently

lives in East Sussex, UK. He studied Fine

Art in the 1980s and whilst others of his

generation faithfully chanted the conceptual

mantra of the time, Hannam focussed on

perfecting his expressive drawing skills

seeking inspiration from the earlier masters.

Works have been exhibited and collected

internationally, including the collections

of Stefan Simchowitz and David Kowitz.

‘The Betrothed’

oil and acrylic on canvas, 220 x 176 cm

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‘The Pathway to Being and Time Remains Hidden’


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Claire Curneen (b. 1968)

Claire Curneen’s iconic sculptures are

poignant contemplations on the liminal and

precarious nature of the human condition;

exploring themes around death, rebirth and

the sublime. Universal and profound states

of fear, loss, suffering and sacrifice fuse

with devotion, desire, wonder and mystery

to underlie each intricate, porcelain figure.

Their translucent and fragile qualities offer

potent, metaphoric abstract narratives.

Porcelain, terracotta and black stoneware

create a grounded vulnerability to these

works, with dribbles of glaze and flashes of

gold to embellish denoted sacred qualities.

Claire Curneen was born in Tralee, Co.

Kerry, Ireland in 1968 and currently lives

and works in Wales, UK. Works have been

exhibited internationally and appear in

many notable public collections including

The Crafts Council, London; Shipley

ArGallery, Gateshead; National Museum

& Gallery of Wales, Cardiff; Victoria and

Albert Museum, London; The Fitzwilliam

Museum, Cambridge; Manchester City Art

Gallery, Manchester; National Museum of

Scotland, Edinburgh; Aberystwyth Arts

Centre, Aberystwyth, Wales; Cleveland Craft

Centre, Middlesbrough; Oldham Art Gallery

and Museum, Manchester; York City Art

Gallery, York; Middlesbrough Institute of

Modern Art, Middlesbrough; Crawford Art

Gallery, Cork, Eire; Limerick City Gallery

of Art, Limerick, Eire; Ulster Museum,

Belfast, Northern Ireland; Benaki Museum,

Athens, Greece; Clay Studio, Philadelphia,

USA; Mint Museum of Craft + Design,

Charlotte, North Carolina, USA; Icheon

World Ceramic Centre, Gyeonggi-do, Korea;

Taipei Ceramics Museum, Taiwan.

‘The Martyr’

porcelain, 30 x 27 x 26 cm

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Rebecca Harper (b. 1989)

Much of Rebecca Harper’s work has revealed

itself through a diasporic consciousness

which can often involve a multiplicity of

belonging and a sense of difference, often

one of ‘otherness’ and displacement. The

identity of the displaced positioning is a

paradox between location and dislocation,

out of place everywhere and not completely

anywhere. Generally, the work frames

expressions of ‘being’ and manifests itself

within an unfolding, wondering, allegoric

commentary on the locations that she

inhabits and those which inhabit her.

Recent work explores a cast of reoccurring

characters that rotate around the outskirts

of the house that she grew up in, where

she also found herself locked down during

Covid. This work is a part of a body of work

that acknowledges the human and worldly

capacity to live at the edge of the precipice.

The characters are never seen as portraits

as such, more like actors that play a role,

filling in for particular people, as they fill

a stage. As Rebecca says of the figure who

resembles herself; “It feels like perhaps this

woman, has almost become a guiding spirit

of myself, one of vulnerability and strength

in the dealings of uncertainty, instability

loss, and grief. She shows up reliably again

and again during terrible turbulence.”

Harper was born in London in 1989,

where she continues to live and work. She

studied at UWE Bristol then The Royal

Drawing School and Turps Art School

(Postgraduate’s). Rebecca was Artist in

Residence at The Santozium Museum,

Santorini, in summer 2019, and Artist in

Residence for the Ryder Project Space at

A.P.T Studios, Deptford in 2018-19 before

becoming a studio and committee Member

in 2019. She was winner of the ACS Studio

Prize in 2018. Chameleon, her debut solo

show at Anima Mundi met with great

acclaim including a review in the FT by

Jackie Wullshlager. Most recently Rebecca

was selected for The John Moore’s Painting

Prize 2021, and previously selected for

Bloomberg New Contemporaries in 2018 at

South London Gallery, Other curated shows

include Huxley Parlour, Public Gallery, The

Royal Academy Summer Show, Christies

London and NYC, Flowers Gallery’, Paul

Stolper Gallery, Turps Art Gallery and

Arusha Gallery. Her work is on long term

display in the Albright Collection at

Maddox Street Club in London curated

by Beth Greenacre and at the Santozeum

Museum in Santorini. Harper is represented

in many public and private collections

internationally including the Ullens and

the Royal Collections.

‘The Shell of the Sacred Water’

acrylic on canvas, 180 x 130 cm

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Arthur Lanyon (b. 1985)

Arthur Lanyon paintings combine intuitive

figurative motifs with an emotive, gestural,

abstracted language. His energetic works

are sited on a physical and metaphysical

cross roads, like a belay between numerous

visual and emotional pinnacles. They offer

a progressive link between the outside

world, the inner architecture of the

brain, altered states of consciousness,

memory and the unencumbered essence of

child’s drawing.

Arthur Lanyon is a British artist born

in Leicester, England in 1985. He lives

and works from a studio near Penzance,

Cornwall. Born in to an artistic family, his

father was the painter Matthew Lanyon and

his grandfather the celebrated, influential

and world renowned modernist painter

Peter Lanyon. He won the Hans Brinker

Painting Award in Amsterdam in 2007 and

gained a first class degree in Fine Art

from Cardiff University in 2008. Upon

graduating he was featured in Saatchi’s

‘New Sensations’ exhibition. In 2014,

his work was in the long-list for the

Aesthetica Art Prize and was included in

the award’s published anthology. His debut

Anima Mundi solo exhibition ‘Return

to Whale’ opened in 2016, which was

followed by ‘White Chalk Lines in 2018,

‘Arcade Laundry’ in 2020 and ‘Coda for an

Obol’ in 2022. Works have been exhibited

extensively, notably including Untitled Art

Fair in Miami; Zona Maco, Mexico City;

the Saatchi Gallery London; The House of

St Barnabas, London; CGK, Copenhagen;

Tat Art, Barcelona and Herrick Gallery,

Mayfair. Arthur Lanyon paintings are held

in private collections worldwide.

‘Sunny Luster’

mixed media on linen, 117 x 110 cm

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James E Crowther (b. 1974)

James E Crowther has earned his reputation

for painting his idiosyncratic signature ‘cut

out’ portraits, rendered in oil on panel. It is

through his attention to detail and his skill

at ‘capturing’ his subject that the sensitivity

of their inner psyche is revealed.

Crowther is a British figurative painter

living and working in rural Oxfordshire

with his two daughters, three dogs and

partner. He was born in Southampton in

1974 and grew up on the River Hamble

Hampshire where his father ran a boatyard.

He secured a place at Brighton art college

in 1993 where the world opened up for him.

He graduated under principle tutors of

Andrzej Jackowski and Brendan Neiland and

continued to live in Brighton for the next

ten years embracing the rich club scene.

In 2004 he had his first painting accepted

for BP Portrait Prize. The highly acclaimed

writer Blake Morrisson said on seeing

James’ painting at the National Portrait

Gallery, “A good portrait painting does not

merely capture a likeness, but connects with

the inner energy of the sitter, showing the

‘flickers of feeling, shadows of thought, or

what Leonardo da Vinci called The motions

of the Mind”. Crowther has been shortlisted

for the Sequested Art Prize 2021/22 at

Unit Gallery and has had several solo

shows in London and exhibited at the

Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, the BP

Portrait Prize, Figurative Art Now at the

Mall Galleries, Lynn Painter Stainers Prize,

The Discerning eye, The Threadneedle

Art Prize and art fairs in London, New

York, Miami, Paris, Switzerland and Greece.

Works are in numerous private collections

internationally.

‘Backstroker’

oil on bespoke panel, 27 x 15 cm

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‘Rare Red Flame’

oil on bespoke panel, 22 x 21 cm

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Gabriel Tendai Choto (b. 1995)

Gabriel Tendai Choto’s artwork combines

the twin disciplines of printmaking and

painting. Through his singular technique

Choto seeks new pathways into the painted

image by taking cues from the surface quality

produced by the printmaking process. His

evolving, experimental practice involves

layering painted areas of naturalism over

the delicate compositional architecture

of etching, resulting in paintings where

physical presence and absence imply a

metaphoric liminal state. Sensitive and

intimate, these images include close family

members, depicting quiet moments of

contemplation or affectionate domestic

scenes taken from old photographs,

increasingly progressing in to self portraits

where through constructed situations the

artist examines his own identity. Choto’s

intimate paintings draw on themes of

home, pride, identity diaspora, change

and personal as well as cultural fragility.

Choto was born in 1995 in Harare, Zimbabwe.

He was raised in Bradford, Yorkshire and

currently lives and works in London. After

completing his Diploma in Art and Design

at Leeds Arts University in 2012, Choto

gained a BAFA in Drawing from Camberwell

College of Art (UAL), London, in 2014

and more recently has completed an MFA

at Central St Martins, London. Selected

group exhibitions include FBA Futures,

Mall Galleries, London, UK (2018); Flock,

GX Gallery, London, UK (2017); Blxckout

Revolution: The Exhibition, 198 Gallery,

London, UK (2017); BAME, Hotel Elephant

Gallery, London, UK (2016); and Long Live

the New Flesh, Tower Gallery, London, UK

(2015). In 2018, Choto was selected for the

Clyde & Co Art Award. Choto’s debut solo

exhibition at Anima Mundi featured in 2021

and most recently he has been personally

invited by Yinka Shonibare to submit for

the 2021 RA Summer Exhibition.

‘Falling Angel’

oil and etching on paper, 76 x 48 cm

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‘Hate Thy Neighbour’

oil and ethcing on paper, 76 x 56 cm

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Carlos Zapata (b. 1963)

Carlos Zapata predominately makes

idiosyncratic carved and painted wooden

sculpture alongside mixed media

installation. His work deals with many

challenging and potent humanist themes

including poverty, conflict, religion

and race, yet perhaps paradoxically, the

overriding characteristics of the work are of

emotive empathy and compassion. Zapata’s

work belongs to and takes inspiration from

folk and tribal artforms from all over the

world but specifically from South America,

from its indigenous populace and the

trade routes and traditions that have fed it

over the centuries. Many of his sculptures

have evolved from personal experience of

living in a foreign land and from his home

country where civil issues continue to

trouble its people.

Carlos Zapata is a Colombian artist who

currently lives and works near Falmouth in

Cornwall, UK. He has exhibited extensively

internationally with works held in numerous

private and museum collections around

the world.

‘Stigmata’

polychromed carved wood, 53 cm height

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Gabrielle K Brown (b. 1994)

Embodying a natural and intuitive,

seemingly naive, yet extremely complex

aesthetic, Gabrielle K Brown is a multifaceted,

multi-media artist who eagerly and

energetically seeks new ways to tell stories

through her artworks. Her pieces retain an

object, often shrine-like quality, utilising

materials including wood, various paints,

resin, fabrics and even hair - nothing

is beyond limits. The works dissect the

relationship we have with ourselves, our

companions, our society and our past with

an awe and celebration of nature and

the divine, shedding light on how we

grow and how we suffer as human beings.

Confrontational imagery is often contrasted

with uplifting symbolism, actions and

words - emphasising the extremes of the

human condition and experience, and

yearning within the energetic and fraught

times that we live in.

Born in 1994 on the east coast of Canada in

New Brunswick, Brown grew up along the

riverside and mountains which is where she

connected to art and began painting and

sculpting. She has spent much of her life

traveling the world and moving throughout

Canada which has always reflected in her

work, but has recently moved back home to

St John, the oldest city in Canada.Work has

been exhibited at Art Basel Miami, as well

as Montreal and New York and LA in the

United States.

‘Hot Steel & A Block of Ice’

mixed media on canvas, 105 x 80 cm

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‘Birth Comes In Many Forms’

mixed media on canvas, 105 x 80 cm

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Jamie Mills (b. 1983)

Jamie Mills is a musician, sound and visual

artist. His practice is underpinned by

investigation surrounding the dissemination

of gesture between materiality and

environments – referencing both internal

and external landscapes. These concerns

are reinforced by an interdisciplinary

approach to working and are made manifest

through the renderings of sounds or

materials often sourced or retrieved via

immersion into nature or borderlands,

and with particular reference to his aural

works, articulated and manipulated through

unorthodox instrumental preparations

and the incorporation and processing of

field recordings. The term ‘gestalt’ refers

to a concept within psychotherapeutic

fields, inferring that the nature of a

whole is greater than the sum of its

parts. Mills’ employment of the mediums

of photography, sound and mark-making

can be read in this sense whereby a reality

is constructed not by the sole surface

representation of any individual element

alone, but instead there is a sense that

the artists reality is presented through

the relationships and the spaces between

elements. In other terms, it is work that

requires both on one hand a stepping

away from, and on the other an immersion

into, in order to extract an empathetic

understanding of the essence of the

work that presides from both a conscious

and subconscious framework of mind.

Universally inherent within his process of

rendering, there is a conscious dialogue

between, on one hand material intent (or

‘essence’) and on the other, control (or the

relinquishing of control), so as to make work

that negotiates thresholds and occupies at

times a liminal status. In this sense Mills’

“intuitively composed” sound works, and

his images or assemblages become markers

to a series of internal journeys or rituals

informed by an often poetic dialogue

between material, form and environment.

‘Memory and Space (Vestige)’

perforated paper, ink, beeswax, 25 x 21 cm

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Jonathan Michael Ray (b. 1984)

Jonathan Michael Ray’s ‘mono no aware’

artworks examine the multilayered

histories, fictions and beliefs assigned

to artefacts, materials and the places he

encounters. A practice comprising of

stained glass, photography, sculpture,

print, drawing, video and installation,

much of his work is deeply connected to

his surroundings. He regularly uses found

objects and images imbued with their

own histories, as well as material direct

from the landscape, appropriating their

symbolism while creating a new context

and meaning. By layering and combining

material, he is interested in looking beyond

the surface of a purely physical existence

and breaking down the institutions by

which we are taught to see and experience

the world. His work alludes to the sublime

power that inanimate material and objects

can contain when we give them space, time

and authority to do so.

Jonathan Michael Ray was born in High

Wycombe, UK and has been based in

West Cornwall since 2018. He studied at

Nottingham Trent in 2007 and at Slade

School of Fine Art in 2016. Earlier this year

Ray was selected to take part in Masterclass

at Zabludowicz Collection, London, he

and Verity Birt organised “Gathering” a

group exhibition at Grays Wharf, Penryn,

and has been shortlisted for the National

Sculpture Prize which is currently on show

at Broomhill Estate in Devon. His work will

be subject of a two person presentation

with Willeminha Barnes Graham at Tate St

Ives in 2022.

‘Sylvan Crop 1 & 2’

photogram, gelatine silver print on resin-coated paper, 38 x 31 cm

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Richard Nott (b. 1963)

Richard Nott’s paintings are unique. There

are no oil or acrylic paints in his studio, he

works with industrial materials, bitumen,

emulsions and varnishes, building them

up layer upon layer, often over intimately

drawn or gouged grids, lines or marks, into

a textural palimpsest, before courageously

scraping or burning them back to reveal what

lies underneath. Viewing Richard Nott’s

artwork is witnessing a protracted collision

of creative and destructive processes. An

evolution of matter, exposed, concealed,

exposed, concealed, continuously. His

paintings become the consequence of

protracted time spent where Nott’s history

merges with the history of the elements

used. He has little interest in illusionistic

‘texture’, the work must be its own entity,

have its own story and be its own statement.

His objective is to create an organic object

that evolves like a living thing with truth

and imperfection. His process of working

allows for a contemplation of a cycle of

existence to become imbued in to the work.

Not a beginning with an end but a journey

where genesis leads to dissolution, and on

once again to genesis. Something eternal

akin to alchemy.

Richard Nott is a British artist born in 1963,

who lives and works in west Cornwall. Nott

gained his Fine Art degree at Lancashire

Polytechnic and his MA in fine art at

Reading University. In 1985 he worked as

an assistant to Andy Goldsworthy on sitespecific

sculptures in the Lake District. He

was gallery assistant at the Royal Academy

from 1986-7 and at Oldham Art Gallery from

1991-2. He won the South West Arts Visual

Arts and Photography Award in 1994. He

gained a residency at the 12th International

Weeks of Painting in Slovenia. Exhibitions

have been extensive and international

notable included numerous solo exhibitions

at Anima Mundi over a long and fruitful

working relationship, ‘Art Now Cornwall’ at

the Tate St Ives and Chashama, Avenue of

the America’s, NYC.

‘Integument (1)’

mixed media floating panel, 106 x 106 cm

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‘Integument (2)’

mixed media floating panel, 106 x 106 cm

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Jim Carter (b. 1967)

break open the chest

if you desire gold, oil, bleach.

let it smother you and see how

your skin blisters, your eyes turn

to dust, the rib cages nothing.

ask him what he has gained,

and he will say / everything.

burrow into his palm and

drain your milk; the North Star

thrashes in his paper folds.

let it blind you and you will see

the narrow skull of a boy, his

hollow cheeks ruddy, the bullet

between his eyes bleeding light.

ask him what he regrets,

and he will say /

Polaris, Brigitta McKeever

Jim Carter was born in Worcestershire

in 1967. He received an MA with

distinction in Art and Environment from

Falmouth University and an MSc Award

in Ecopsychology, Centre For Human

Ecology. Carter’s work has appeared in

The Dark Mountain, About Place Journal,

Unpsychology and Earthlines magazine.

‘The North and South Star :

1. Not Descended from a Common Father / 2. I Cast the Lots from the Left Hand’

fox, crow and jackdaw marks, crow feathers, wood from the brook, clay, charcoal, inks, brook water,

fox tooth, deer and sheep bone, bracken and willowherb, earth and debris, 66 x 42 x 12 cm / 35 x 33 x 17 cm

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Dr Martin Shaw (b. 1959)

Dr Martin Shaw tells stories and explored

wild ideas about how myth used to be a

kind of language that spoke-across-species.

That myth itself can be a place where we

witness not just narratives about the earth,

but moments where the earth itself speaks

through these stories. With inspirations

ranging as far as Gaston Bachelard to Islamic

Cosmology to the work of Joseph Beuys,

Shaw celebrates electrifying storytelling and

thought-stimulating ideas.

Dr. Martin Shaw’s first book, ‘A Branch From

The Lightning Tree’ was awarded the Nautilus

prize for non-fiction, and was followed by

‘Snowy Tower’ and ‘Scatterlings’ to complete

a trilogy of works on mythology, landscape and

the nature of soul. An international teacher,

he has designed andLife’ courses at Stanford

University, and, lead both the ‘Oral Tradition’

and ‘Mythic Life’ courses at Stanford

University and as a fellow of of Schumacher

College in Devon, co-created their MA in

Myth and Ecology. His school of independent

scholars in mythopoetic’s and wilderness

studies is just entering its fourteenth year.

Recent collaborations have included Mark

Rylance, Coleman Barks and David Abram. He

is a painting scholar from The British School

in Rome, and his translations of Gaelic and

Welsh folklore (with Tony Hoagland) have

been published in The Mississippi Review,

Poetry International, Kenyon Review, Orion,

and Poetry Magazine. 2018 will see the

release of his new book, ‘Courting the Dawn:

Poems of Lorca’ (with Stephan Harding), with

several more in completion: all involving

a revisioning of the word romanticism in

the early twenty first century. is essay and

conversation with Ai Weiwei on myth and

migration was released by the Marciano

Art Foundation.

‘Flowering Owl’

charcoal on paper, 30 x 21 cm

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‘Winnowing Fork’


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‘Merlinus’


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Shiri Mordechay (b. 1974)

Shiri Mordechay’s extraordinary painted

works have a cinematic quality, where

expansive imagery seemingly passes

through time and space, like fleeting scenes

in a film or interconnected snippets of

dream. Both 2D and 3D painted installation

works are made piece by piece, where a

narrative unfolds, like a trail of instinct.

Imagery seems to arrive with fluidity,

through the artist as conduit, moving

within an unguarded realm, seemingly free

of structured morality or logical confine,

conjuring what Julia Kristeva calls an

“oceanic feeling”. Mordechay’s form of

ambiguous realism is revealed through an

intuitive rendering of unmediated internal

psychology or event, which through her

translation offers up a wider metaphysical

and perhaps spiritual context. She attains

a preservation of the enigma of the

unconscious, where constructed ego is

eroded or absorbed into something more

widely connected, not necessarily at one

with beauty, yet seductive none the less,

like a forbidden fruit promising to lure us

towards darkness or light. As expressed by

Alfred Lord Tennyson, Mordechay paints an

inner and outer world where nature is “red

in tooth and claw”. Acclaimed American art

critic Jerry Saltz wrote “Shiri Mordechay

gives us a topsy-turvy world of mundane

and mad images... It’s Charles Adams meets

Edgar Allen Poe meets Animal Planet.

Mordechay never allows us to look at any

one thing; chaos and tumult reign.”

Mordechay was born in Israel and raised

in Nigeria. She received her BFA from

the San Francisco Art Institute and an

MFA from School of Visual Arts in New

York, where she now lives and works.

In 2013, he was named as one of “25

Artists to Watch & Collect” by Artvoices

Magazine. Solo exhibitions have occurred

in San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York

and Italy.

‘Untitled (1)’

watercolour on paper, 36 x 28 cm

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‘Untitled (2)’

watercolour on paper, 51 x 41 cm

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Luke Routledge (b. 1988)

Luke Routledge creates a phantasmagoric

caste of grotesques constructed a

re-assembled from an ever growing body

of figures. Routledge’s sculptural output is

focused on the description of an alternate

society of nonsensical, protohumans,

anthropomorphic beings and the speculative

fictional multiverse that they call home.

This multiverse is used as a framework

within which to explore and unite diverse

research topics, creating a living, collage

territory. The hypothetical beings that these

sculptures represent are positioned as a

band of travellers exploring and striving to

understand the cosmos they inhabit. They

are building their cultures and communities

as Routledge, through research, stitches

new information into the fabric of their

reality. As his research expands to include

new topics, the beings transition from

place to place - with each presentation they

are simultaneously charting the boundaries

of their existence. Central to both the

material nature of his sculptures and the

narrative setting is the idea of assemblage.

His sculptures are constructed in a modular

method that allows them to be dismantled

and reassembled in new configurations,

resulting in new narrative threads emerging

across the installations and feeding the

stories that he creates. The sculptures,

their tools, possessions and elements of

their landscape are predominantly made

from an air dry clay material that he

has been developing for a number of

years. This material can be manipulated

to achieve a diverse range of finishes and

is used alongside other clays, silicones

and CAD components. He combines these

elements with altered electronics, treating

them as found objects; utilising them to

create a semblance of the technology and

architecture of this other space, brought to

life by animatronic elements.

‘Woodland Sprite’

mixed media, 50 x 28 x 18 cm

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Andrew Litten (b. 1970)

Andrew Litten’s dynamic and gestural

figurative paintings express a strong

interest in the universal complexity of

everyday existence. Dealing with humanistic

themes such as love, sensuality, fear,

anger, loss, nostalgia, mundanity, personal

growth and perceived identity normality

or disturbance. Works are created with an

unguarded, empathetic attitude, like so

many expressionistic artists, a rawness of

approach combined with an often viscous

application of paint is also key to the extreme

experience felt from the work. Gesture and

nuance inspire extreme emotive reading,

perhaps subversive, tender, passionate,

ambivalent, malevolent or compassionate,

our response becomes one of allure

or repulsion.

Andrew Litten is a British artist, born in

Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire in 1970. He

currently works from his studio in Fowey,

Cornwall. He is a self-taught artist leaving

art college as a teenager having found

it to be too restrictive to his aspired

method of working. For a decade he created

mostly small-scale works using humble

domestic or found materials (including

envelopes and assembled furniture parts).

The work made at this time deliberately

challenged ideas of art elitism and art as

commodity. He then moved to Cornwall

in 2001 and chose to begin exhibiting.

Early success came when his work was

included in an exhibition titled ‘Nudes’ in

New York City, (along with Jacob Epstein

and Pierre-Auguste Renoir), where his

work was highlighted and reviewed by the

New York Times. Shortly after he had four

consecutive solo exhibitions at Goldifsh

Fine Arts in Penzance, Cornwall. Other

notable exhibitions included ‘Move’ at Vyner

Street, London, during Frieze Art Week

2007, where his work ‘Dog Breeder’, created

as a twisted and emphatic anti-art statement,

was exhibited. He was also included in ‘No

Soul For Sale’ at Tate Modern Turbine Hall,

London in 2010. In 2012 he held a major

solo exhibition at Millennium in St Ives,

Cornwall and that year was given a guest

solo exhibition at L13 Light Industrial

Workshop, London. He has also held largescale

solo exhibitions at Spike Island and

Motorcade FlashParade in Bristol. ‘Ordinary

Bodies, Ordinary Bones’ was conceived with

support from The Arts Council, UK and

was exhibited at Anima Mundi in 2018.

Works have been included in numerous

international curated mixed exhibitions

in Berlin, Dublin, Siena, Milwaukee and

New York City and in Venice during the

54th Biennale. Most recently paintings have

been exhibited in four major museums in

China. Andrew Litten paintings feature

in numerous international private and

public collections.

‘Nurture’


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‘Dog Idol’


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Trevor Bell (1930-2017)

“I feel that what we should get from art is a sense

of wonder, of something beyond ourselves, that

celebrates our ‘being’ here.”

Trevor Bell, (1930-2017)

Trevor Bell was a British artist, born in

Leeds, England in 1930. He passed away in

2017 in West Cornwall. Bell’s creative interest

focussed primarily, on painting’s power to

evoke sensation, which for him superseded

any illusionistic properties. Ambitious in

scale and dynamic in form, the range of

work is diverse. His focus was a celebration

of mutable energy, elemental forces and a

quest for contemplative stillness. He achieved

significant critical acclaim and recognition for

his direct, abstract forms which emphatically

represent the conflic and harmony found in the

natural world to the spiritual concerns which

connect the inner with all that surrounds

us. Chris Stephens (former head of displays

at Tate Britain) said “Bell’s art is, in the

loosest sense, spiritual. It evokes, or reflects,

an idea of some abstract force that exceeds

material reality... The dangers and losses of

the modern world would be compensated

through the rediscovery of natural order and

process, and a renewed sense of individual

identity would be established through the

exploration of forces larger than ourselves.

Bell’s work, one might say, has always derived

in one way or another from this new sublime.”

Bell attended Leeds College of Art from

1947 to 1952 and, encouraged by Terry

Frost, moved to Cornwall in 1955, where

he made his reputation as a leading member

of the St Ives School, who helped establish

British Art on the international stage.

Waddington Galleries gave Bell his first solo

exhibition in 1958. Patrick Heron wrote the

essay for the exhibition, stating that Bell was

‘the best non-figurative painter under thirty’.

In 1959 Bell was awarded the Paris Biennale

International Painting Prize, and an Italian

Government Scholarship and the following

year was offered the Gregory Fellowship

in Painting at the University of Leeds.

Throughout the 1960’s Bell showed work in

major exhibitions in the UK and USA and

during this time his work was first purchased

for the Tate collection. In 1973 he presented

his work at the Whitechapel Gallery, having

just taken part in a major exhibition at the

Corcoran Gallery in Washington DC. Over

the course of the next thirty years Bell

combined painting with teaching eventually

moving to Florida State University to become

the Professor for Master Painting. He went

on to spend the next 20 years in America.

Important exhibitions were held at the

Corcoran Gallery; the Academy of Sciences

in Washington, the Metropolitan Museum

in Miami, The Cummer Gallery and the

Museum of Art at Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

In 1985 Bell was included in the London

Tate Gallery’s St Ives 1939-64 exhibition and

in 1993 he was part of the inaugural show

of the Tate St Ives. Bell had a major solo

exhibition at the Tate St.Ives in 2004 and,

in 2011, a further 14 works were obtained by

the Tate for their permanent collection. Bell

has works in numerous public and private

collections internationally.

.

‘Sharpie’

mixed media on canvas, 56 x 80 x 16 cm

97

Marcelle Hanselaar (b. 1945)

Marcelle Hanselaar was born in Rotterdam,

the Netherlands. Growing up in the formal

atmosphere of a protestant, postwar

country, proved, thanks to her drop-out/

turn-on rebellion, a profound source of

inspiration for the recurring subject matter

in Hanselaar’s work; namely the fierce

and sometimes troubled cohabitation with

those raw desires, secret fantasies and

uncultivated instincts and our functioning

in a civil society. Although Hanselaar

studied briefly at the Royal Academy of

Arts in The Hague, her lust for adventure,

guided by a quest for self-discovery, led

her to years of travel, until, in the early

1980’s she settled down in her studio in

London where she still lives. Self-taught,

she started out as an abstract painter before

turning to figuration. At the same time she

became fascinated by etching, its harsh,

bitten line seemed to perfectly suit her

subject matter. As an artist Hanselaar looks

for ways to express those illusive questions

of who and what we are when the mask is

off, and how we appear when the mask is

on. The shock effect of her work lies in

the contrast of combining her outspoken

subject matter with the conventional

medium of oil painting or etching. Both her

paintings and her prints display her delight

and fascination with theatrical illusions

and although often peppered with a biting

sense of humour, the works reveals her own

vibrant understanding of human nature, in

all its animosity and fragility.

Hanselaar has exhibited her paintings and

prints internationally, and can be found in

private and public collections worldwide

including British Museum Prints Collection,

London; The Metropolitan Museum of Art,

Print Collection, New York; V & A Prints

& Drawings Collection, London; V & A

National Art Library, London; Whithworth

Art Gallery and Museum; Ashmolean

Museum, Oxford; Fitzwilliam Museum,

Cambridge; Clifford Chance Art Collection,

London; The Viktor Wynd Museum of

Curiosities, London; Swarthmore College,

Pennsylvania, US; University of Arizona,

Tucson, US; Sakimi Art Museum, Okinawa,

Japan; Guandong Fine Art Museum,

Guandong, China; Iraq National Library,

Baghdad; Meermanno Museum-House of the

Book, The Hague; Soho House Amsterdam;

AMC, Amsterdam; Amsterdam Arts Council;

Kunstcollectie; Gemeente Haaksbergen, NL;

University of Aberystwyth Print Collection,

Wales; New Hall Art Collection, University

of Cambridge; Clare Hall, Cambridge; The

Ned, London; Rabo Bank, London; Merrill

Lynch, London; Risk Publications, London;

Mitsukoshi Ltd., London and Paintings in

Hospitals, London

‘Under My Skin’


98

99

100

James Seow (b. 1971)

James Seow was born in Malaysia and

has resided in the UK since moving there

in the late 90s. He received an MA in

Printmaking from the Royal College of

Art in 2014, where he developed work

across a range of media and techniques,

including print, photography, sculpture

and installation. He explores connections

between traditional Eastern art and the

contemporary, using digital techniques

and modern visual language to interrogate

these connections. The relationship

between nature and urban life is a key focus

in Seow’s practice. His work is informed

by his early life experience, witnessing the

huge transformation of Malaysia through its

massive deforestation and urban planning

policies of the 90s. Seow plays with how

ideals of universal equality and harmony

can be communicated, often drawing on the

imagery of parks and gardens, illustrating

the dichotomy between constructed

environments and the ephemerality of the

natural world. Working with the interplay

between the natural and the artificial, the

rational and the instinctive, he encourages a

critical rethinking of contemporary reality.

James Seow’s work has been exhibited

internationally and is in various private

collections including Central Saint Martins

School of Art and Design, Royal College of

Art, Brookfield Asset Management Inc. and

St James, Berkeley Group, UK.

‘These Fiery Times (1 & 2)’

archival print (ed 15), 21 x 32 cm

101

102

‘These Fiery Times (3-5)’

archival print (ed 15), 21 x 32 cm

103

Kristoffer Axen (b. 1984)

Kristoffer Axén’s atmospheric paintings

are often auto-biographical as a means of

tapping into the wider human condition.

Works revolve around themes including

the utopia of childhood, the temporary,

dreamlike, quality of reality and the

unconscious search for something oblique

or unspecified. A sense of nostalgia is

often tinged with an overarching feeling of

the melancholy of transience. Inspired by

cinematic imagery, anonymous photographs

from the internet and childhood snapshots,

Axén’s paintings and drawings are often

bordering the dreamstate and the inner

world. While contemporary and historic

references include Michael Borremans,

Mamma Andersson, Vilhelm Hammershoi

and Richard Diebenkorn, his use of textured

mechanical pencil for the drawings and

the juxtaposed realism with the simplified

blocks in his paintings are uniquely his own.

Kristoffer Axén was born in Stockholm,

Sweden where his still resides. He is

a selfself-taught painter, who studied

fine-art photography at the International

Center of Photography in New York

between 2008-2009, a city in which he

lived and worked until 2013. Axén’s works

have been exhibited internationally in

solo exhibitions in New York, Copenhagen,

Stockholm and in numerous group shows

around the world, notably at Liljevalchs

Spring Show in Stockholm, Sweden,

Aperture Gallery in New York, USA

and at Musée de l’Elysée in Lausanne,

Switzerland. Axén’s works are included

in many private and public collections

including as the ICP collection, Michaelis

School of Fine Arts and MONA and he has

been published in articles from magazines

including Zoom Magazine, The New York

Times and Vogue Italia.

‘Entropy’


104

105

106

‘The Beach’


107

Sax Impey (b. 1969)

Sax Impey’s artworks are often large scale,

immersive and elemental, incorporating

intense detail and dexterity and an

expressive, behavioural use of medium.

Since 2005, Impey has produced works

derived predominantly from experiences

at sea. A qualified RYA Yachtmaster he has

sailed many thousands of miles around the

world. His journeys have had a profound

impact and subsequent development as an

artist. Reconnecting with nature through

this powerful element has the almost

inescapable effect of calling to question

many of life’s existential questions. This

epiphanic moment of realisation, of

revelation, is at the core of Impey’s oeuvre.

Reflecting on and capturing personal

moments and making them universal,

Impey’s work reaffirms the importance

of introspection and confrontation, found

specifically when surrounded by the natural

world; “A mind can breathe, and observe,

and reflect, away from the shrill desperation

of a culture that, having forgotten that it is

better to say nothing than something about

nothing, invents ever new ways to fill

every single space with less and less”.

Impey was born in Penzance, Cornwall. He

currently works from one of the prestigious

Porthmeor Studios in St. Ives. From 2005,

he has collaborated with the cross-cultural,

environmental art group Red Earth. In 2007

Impey’s work was selected for the ‘Art Now

Cornwall’ exhibition at Tate St Ives where

he was placed on the cover of the associated

publication. The same year he was heralded

in The Times as one of the ‘New Faces

of Cornish Art’. In 2010 he was featured

in Owen Sheers’s BBC4 Documentary

‘Art of the Sea (In Pictures)’ alongside

Anish Kapoor, J. M. W. Turner, Martin Parr

and Maggi Hambling among others. His

work was selected as a finalist the 2013

Threadneedle Prize and the year before

was elected an Academician at the Royal

West of England Academy. His paintings

are in multiple collections including The

Arts Council, Warwick University and the

Connaught Hotel.

‘Gulf Stream Squall’

mixed media on panel, 91 x 122 cm

108

109

110

Roger Thorp (b. 1955)

‘The Dreamer’s Heart’ is a short film

poem that has been previously exhibited

as an audio work at Auditorium Parco

della Musica in Rome. The work is a

nostalgic lamentation which evokes a quiet

and subtle sense of urgency to protect

what is unique and authentic, in contrast

to the pervasive erosion endemic to our

contemporary world.

Roger Thorp’s interest in the poetic

use of word and image, to evoke a deep

emotional response, are key to his creative

process. His artworks are unapologetically

infused with a nostalgic romanticism,

transmitting an enormous sensitivity

towards the earth, humanity and a universal

inter-connectedness between matter and all

living things. Primarily consisting of video

work and multi-media installation, his work

is informed by a deeply-felt belief that as

a society, and as individuals, we need to

come home, to remember a less rapacious

and frenetic way of living, more connected

on an emotional level to each other, and to

the rest of the natural world. If his work

offers up an urgent protest, it remains an

optimistic and tender one.

Thorp is a British artist born in Derbyshire.

He currently lives and works in Cornwall.

He previously worked as a producer on

music videos before directing / producing

programmes for NGO’s such as WWF, ILO,

Greenpeace and the Red Cross, working

in Australia, Mongolia and the USA. He

has also made two feature films. Other

work by Thorp as a writer / director

has been screened in Rome, Barcelona,

Berlin, Oslo, Copenhagen, Istanbul, USA,

Cornwall and London. In 2015 he founded

‘The Olive Network’ a sophisticated web

platform built to foster tolerance and

understanding throughout diverse global

communities by focusing on the positive

long-term contributions of charity, the arts

and humanities. Thorp’s artwork has been

exhibited extensively.

‘The Dreamers Heart’

single channel video (duration 01:38)(duration 01:38)

111

Joy Wolfenden Brown (b. 1961)

Joy Wolfenden Brown’s intimate oil

paintings feel hauntingly familiar

possessing a raw, emotional, honesty. She

captures fleeting fragments of memory,

moments in time where the inherent

vulnerability of the figures depicted, often

in isolation, is palpable. These are lovingly

yet spontaneously executed reflections

on the human condition, which have an

unnervingly, yet simultaneously comforting,

unguarded quality.

Joy Wolfenden Brown is a British artist born

in Stamford, Lincolnshire. She currently

lives in Bude, North Cornwall. She graduated

from Leeds University then completed a

post-graduate diploma in Art Therapy at

Hertfordshire College of Art & Design

which she worked as an for ten years before

moving to Cornwall in 1999. Since then

she has had numerous solo exhibitions and

was the First Prize Winner in The National

Open Art Competition, 2012. She was also

awarded the Somerville Gallery painting

prize in 2003 and first prize winner at the

Sherborne Open in 2007 and the Revolver

Pricze at The RWA in 2019. Works were

acquired by the Anthony Pettullo Outsider

Art Collection in Milwaukee with further

works held in collections worldwide.

‘Gathering Light’

oil on paper, 43 x 29 cm

112

113

114

Peter Randall-Page (b .1954)

During the past 25 years Peter Randall-

Page has gained an international reputation

through his monumental sculpture, drawings

and prints which deal with the fundamental

nature of existence. His practice remains

informed and inspired by the study of natural

phenomena and its subjective impact on

our emotions. In recent years his work has

become increasingly concerned with the

underlying principles determining growth and

the forms it produces. In his words “geometry

is the theme on which nature plays her

infinite variations, fundamental mathematical

principle become a kind of pattern book from

which nature constructs the most complex

and sophisticated structures.

Peter Randall-Page is a British artist born

in Essex, England in 1954. He currently lives

and works in Devon. Randall-Page studied

sculpture at Bath Academy of Art from 1973-

1977. In 1999, he was awarded an Honorary

Doctorate of Arts from the University of

Plymouth, an Honorary Doctorate of Letters

from York St John University in 2009 and an

Honorary Doctorate of Letters from Exeter

University in 2010; from 2002 to 2005 he was

an Associate Research Fellow at Dartington

College of Arts. In 2015 he was made a Royal

Academician. Recent commissions include

‘Give and Take’ in Newcastle which won the

2006 Marsh Award for Public Sculpture,

‘Mind’s Eye’ a large ceramic wall mounted

piece for the Department of Psychology at

Cardiff University (2006) and a commemorative

sculpture for a Mohegan Chief at Southwark

Cathedral (2006). Recent projects include

‘Green Fuse’ for the Jerwood Sculpture Park,

Ragley Hall and a major one person exhibition

in and around the Underground Gallery at the

Yorkshire Sculpture Park, June 2009 - April

2010. In 2015 he unveiled ‘The One and The

Many’ at Fitzroy place London, An 25 tonne

boulder inscribes with origin stories from

around the world in native dialect. Over the

years he has undertaken numerous large scale

commissions and exhibited widely across

the globe. His work is held in numerous

public and private collections throughout

the world including Japan, South Korea,

Australia, USA, Turkey, Eire, Germany and

the Netherlands. A selection of his public

sculptures can be found in many urban and

rural locations throughout the UK including

London, Edinburgh, Manchester, Bristol,

Oxford and Cambridge and his work is in

the permanent collections of the Tate Gallery

and the British Museum amongst others. As a

member of the design team for the Education

Resource Centre (The Core) at the Eden

Project in Cornwall, Peter influenced the

overall design of the building incorporating

an enormous granite sculpture, ‘Seed’, at

its heart.

‘Lunar Stone’

carved pebble, 6 x 28 x 9 cm

115

Andrew Hardwick (b. 1961)

Andrew Hardwick’s often large scale,

sedimentary paintings display his captivation

with ever decreasing wilderness zones; both

natural and man-made. Playing with and

subverting traditional notions of romantic

landscape painting and the sublime. The

paintings often depict edge-land zones

around big industrial conurbations or ports,

such as large-scale car storage compounds,

redundant factories and polluted waste

lands. Other works draw inspiration from

the more typically idyllic locations such as

Dartmoor and Bodmin Moor. However, these

landscapes are also filled with reminders

of human interference. Roads criss-cross

the moor in deeply scratched lines, a

narrow road is etched into an otherwise

massive moorland triptych, likewise a real

car radiator sits in the surface of another

painting as if decaying and buried by

the earth. His medium of working is also

atypical, paintings are heavily layered with

different types of paint (often sourced

from recycling centres), plaster, plastics,

soils, pigments, roofing felt, hay and

other unconventional materials. To this

rich surface relevant artefacts are often

added, creating reminders, triggering

memories or reflecting fears intrinsic to

a particular landscape. The concept of

layering in the landscape arrived partly

a result of the artist’s childhood, during

which his family’s farm was first sliced

in half by the M5 motorway and then

again by the Royal Portbury Dock. The

land once filled with sheep has become a

pure edge-land wilderness with detritus

of continuous development now occupying

and obliterating the land. Hardwick’s

entire oeuvre makes reference to concepts

of change, memory, history, emotion and

transience. Ever redolent is the notion that

we are but another layer in time.

Andrew Hardwick is a British artist born

in Bristol, England in 1961 where he still

resides. He achieved an MA in Fine Art at

the University of Wales. He is an elected

Academician at the Royal West of England

Academy. He has featured in four solo

exhibitions at Anima Mundi. Works have

been exhibited extensively including

numerous public shows and have been

collected worldwide.

‘Gorse Bush & Wilderness’


116

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‘Moor, Cloud & Rain’


118

‘Brown Moor & Cloud’


119

Paul Benney (b. 1959)

Paul Benney was born in London and

currently lives and works in Suffolk. He

rose to international prominence as a

member of the Soho and East Village

Neo-Expressionist group, whilst living

and working in New York City in the

1980s where he worked and exhibited

alongside peers Marylyn Minter, Jean-

Michel Basquiat and David Wojnarovicz

among the many other others who made

up the exploding NY art scene. Despite

living and working in this extraordinary

creative environment Benney’s painting

maintained a uniquely English sensibility.

Collections including the Metropolitan

Museum of Art in New York, The Brooklyn

Museum, The National Gallery of Australia

and The National Portrait Gallery in London,

The Royal Collection and The Eli Broad

Foundation own works. He has exhibited

in eight BP Portrait Award Exhibitions

and twice won the BP Visitors’ Choice

Award. Benney’s portrait subjects have

included HM Queen Elizabeth II, Sir Mick

Jagger, John Paul Getty III, 7th Marquess

of Bath, The State Portrait for Israel, Lord

Rothschild, as well as Ben Barnes for the

portrait in the feature film ‘A Portrait of

Dorian Grey’. Benney was invited to be

resident artist at Somerset House in 2010.

During his five year residency he held the

exhibition ‘Night Paintings’ in 2012 and

drew over 15,000 visitors. In 2017 his epic

painting and holosonic sound installation

‘Speaking in Tongues’ was a prominent

feature of the Venice Biennale.

‘Bucolia’

oil on panel, 60 x 45 cm

120

121

Published by Anima Mundi to coincide with ‘Mabon’

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Mabon

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