British Art Fair 2022: Saatchi Gallery

Freya Bramble-Carter is a London-based ceramics artist, known for works that tap into the universal power of nature and the feminine forces of the Earth. Freya’s imagination, life experiences, and personal philosophies all influence her process and the forms she creates. Her work ranges from fine homewares including plates and bowls to large outdoor sculptural pieces, and even water features for interior or outdoor spaces. Applying her talent to artisan glazes and handcrafting unique silhouettes, Freya's limited-edition pieces are designed to elevate the everyday and inspire awe through their textures, colors, and shape.

Before studying fine art at Chelsea College of Arts, Freya grew up with clay covered hands learning from her father and fellow ceramicist Chris Bramble. She compliments her creative practice by teaching classes, but often enjoys ‘unlearning’ the rules when it comes to making her own pieces. She relishes the magic of making and how clay as a medium is full of endless, fluid possibilities. Her connection to the medium is a helpful tool, as clay is a teacher on many levels. Always learning to let go, reimagine, and adjust, Bramble-Carter’s relationship with her medium is ever evolving. Freya allows flow and freedom in her work as well as structure and strength. She believes in creating works that she can ‘impart with a piece of my soul.’

Crown the Clown Collection by Freya Bramble-Carter was specially crafted for the Meaning Behind Materiality exhibition with Cynthia Corbett Gallery as part of London Craft Week 2021. Her latest series, Pearl Parade, was created during her 2021-22 studio residency with Florence St. George in the Bahamas. It made a splendid debut at Collect 2022 with Cynthia Corbett Gallery. This collection was born of Freya and Florence's mutual love of the Bahamian land and sea. In celebration of this shared love, they foraged clay from East End Grand Bahama. Then the artists patiently waited three years for the clay to mature so that they could work with it. In early 2022 Freya returned to the Islands and the two potters worked night and day for two weeks collaborating on the collection while also using a finer clay to complement their new clam-formed vases. The vases reflect the waves that crash on the sandy shores of the Bahamas, the petals and leaves that grow from the inside of the pots belly are like tongues, the voices echoing their journey. The pots are delicate, feminine, strong, and proud.

Freya Bramble-Carter is represented by Cynthia Corbett Gallery.

Jemima Murphy is from a large artistic family and grew up surrounded by art. After studying Russian BA degree at the University of Bristol, she spent a year training to be an actor in New York. Always keeping up with her painting, a few years ago she decided to take it on fully. Selected exhibitions and fairs include Soho Revue, Liliya Art Gallery, Artsy with Janet Rady, Eastwood Gallery, Moorwood Art, Petworth Fine Art and Battersea Affordable Art with Thomas Spencer. Jemima recently had a solo show ‘Into Euphoria’ at 54 The Gallery earlier this year and her work has since been in many private collections. Her work is currently on display at Home House, Marylebone.

Jemima had her Cynthia Corbett Gallery debut at the Summer Exhibition in Wimbledon and is debuting her work with Cynthia Corbett Gallery at the British Art Fair.

Her paintings explore an imaginary world: inspired by the beauty of nature, the works address a myriad of existential themes from the inescapable enchantment of memory and desire to the sensuality of love and the tribulations of loss. Though the work is surreal, every view relates to an actual location. This juxtaposition highlights nature’s relationship to the power of perception, emotion, memory and desire. Much of her work is rooted in themes of love and loss. She highlights their impact on emotional memory and how they can cause constantly shifting perspectives, endlessly fracturing the concept of unbiased truth in affairs of the heart.

Amy Hughes’s ceramic practice draws inspiration from historical ceramic traditions ranging across centuries. Hughes’ works reference and pay homage to the originals, but are created with a freer approach, giving them a new lease of life.

After Alhambra pieces take inspiration from the large lustre vases produced during the Nasrid Dynasty, the last Muslim Dynasty ruling Granada, in the 14th and 15th centuries. These source works became romantically known as 'Alhambra Vases', and only 8 remain in semi-intact existence today. The skill, legend, and intrigue surrounding the ‘Alhambra Vases’ captivated Amy and pushed her to explore a contemporary response to the stunning relics. The forms, the two wing-like handles, and horizontal decorations all reference the originals.

After Amphora pieces take inspiration from ancient Greek pottery, with a focus on form and decoration. The vases seek to 'talk' about these distinctive ancient storage jars and the intricate decoration that was painted upon them. Again, Hughes has explored this historical ceramic tradition through coil and slab built forms. She has created vibrant patterns and shapes with a colourful, lively, and painterly approach that gives the ancient forms a new lease of life.

Both series are rooted in historical ceramic traditions, but their contemporary influences stem from fashion and print culture. Hughes explores these most prominently through her use of colour, texture, and pattern. The use of texture creates almost fabric like aesthetics on vases. Layers of slip application create depth akin to a knit or heavy weave, with some more exposed or 'faded' areas gauze-like and requiring a darn. The wing-like handles suggest bold, printed forms but retain the rawness of a torn, unfinished edge. Hughes made multiple drawing studies of intricate Islamic surface patterns before enlarging details and intrepidly stenciling them onto areas of the vase bodies, creating fresh patterns which reference the source material in a fresh manner.

In these works, she creates a vibrant expression of materiality that bridges a centuries wide gap between historical masterworks and contemporary culture.

Amy Hughes works and exhibits internationally, including high profile Collect art fair with the Crafts Council with Cynthia Corbett Gallery and a spell as Artist in Residence at Konstfack School, Stockholm, Sweden. She was nominated to represent the UK in ‘New Talent’ at the European Ceramic Context 2014 as well as being shortlisted for the inaugural Young Masters Maylis Grand Ceramics Prize 2014 for artists who show an exceptional command of ceramics, alongside an awareness of the heritage of ceramic craft.

In 2015, Hughes was chosen as the first Ceramics and Industry Artist in Residence at the Victoria & Albert Museum working in collaboration with 1882Ltd, as well as being selected as one of eleven artists for AWARD at the British Ceramics Biennial ‘presenting new works exemplifying the energy and vitality of the best of British contemporary ceramics practice.’
In 2018 her first solo show Garniture at Croome Court (part of the National Trust) was funded by Arts Council England – she had the opportunity of working with Croome Court's extensive collections. Most recently she was selected as one of 5 commissioned Artists to work with at The Leach Pottery St Ives on the Leach 100, which is part of centenary celebrations looking at the past, the present and the future of studio pottery. In 2021 she will be participating in For the Love of the Master: 25 artists fascinated by Piranesi – a group exhibition celebrating the legacy of this versatile Roman artist in the 21st century. This homage to Piranesi will be held in Dublin Castle & the Casino at Marino, Dublin.

Amy Hughes made her Art Miami debut with Cynthia Corbett Gallery in 2021 and was represented by Cynthia Corbett Gallery at Collect 2022 and London Art Fair 2022.

‘America has Lichtenstein, we have Azzopardi!’ - Estelle Lovatt FRSA

Deborah Azzopardi acquired worldwide fame for her joyous Pop Art images she has created over the past 35 years. Her unique and feminine take on contemporary art is best described by the esteemed art critic Estelle Lovatt: ‘America has Lichtenstein, we have Azzopardi!’ Lovatt goes on to comment: “Sometimes you just want to curl up under a blanket. With a good book. A piece of chocolate. A man. This is what Deborah Azzopardi’s pictures make me feel like doing. They are me. They remind me of the time I had a red convertible sports car. I had two, actually. And yes, they are you, too. You immediately, automatically, engage with the narrative of Azzopardi’s conversational visual humour. Laughter is the best aphrodisiac, as you know. ... There’s plenty of art historical references from... Manet’s suggestive ‘Olympia’; Boucher’s thought-provoking... ‘Louise O’Murphy’ and Fragonard’s frivolous, knickerless, ‘The Swing’.... Unique in approach, you easily recognise an Azzopardi picture. ... Working simple graphics and toned shading (for depth), the Pop Art line that Azzopardi sketches is different to Lichtenstein’s. Hers is more curvaceous. Feminine.”

The world is familiar with Azzopardi’s artworks, as many of them have been published internationally. Her original paintings, such as the Habitat ‘Dating’ series (2004/08), the iconic ...One Lump Or Two? (2014) and Love Is The Answer (2016), created by the artist at the request of Mitch and Janis Winehouse as a tribute to their daughter, are in great demand. This year Azzopardi was commissioned to create two works celebrating the late Queen Elizabeth’s Platinum Jubilee. The first, making use of platinum leaf, silver leaf, and diamond dust, presents an image of the young queen rendered in symbols of her long reign. The second, an image of Her Majesty’s coronation shoe done in silver and gold leaf, celebrates the design by Roger Vivier which allowed her to endure the 3-hour coronation.

Deborah Azzopardi is represented internationally by Cynthia Corbett Gallery.

Painter Andy Burgess, Lauded by Annabel Sampson, Deputy Editor of Tatler as “the next David Hockney”, continues to expand upon his fascination with contemporary architecture. A new series of paintings on panel and canvas colourfully re-imagines iconic modernist and contemporary houses. Burgess selects the subjects for his paintings with the discernment of the portrait painter. Buildings are chosen for their clean lines, bold geometric design, and dynamic forms. Burgess approaches his subjects with a fresh eye, simplifying and abstracting forms even further and inventing, somewhat irreverently, new colour schemes that expand the modernist lexicon beyond the minimalist white palette and rigid use of primary colours. Real places are sometimes re-invented, the architecture and design altered and modified, with new furniture and landscaping and a theatrical lighting that invests the painted scene with a dream-like quality and a peaceful and seductive allure.

Hailing from London, though now based in Arizona, Burgess explores in depth the genesis of modern architecture in Europe and the US and its relationship to modern art, avant-garde design, and abstract painting. Burgess explains his fascination with modernist architecture thusly:

‘Despite the huge impact of early modern architecture, the innovative and subtle minimalist buildings that I am researching, with their concrete and steel frames, flat roofs, and glass walls, never became the dominant mode of twentieth century building. We have continued to build the vast majority of houses in a traditional and conservative idiom, so that these great examples of modern architecture, designed by the likes of Gropius, Loos and Breuer to name but a few, are still shocking and surprising today in their boldness and modernity, almost a hundred years after they were built.’

Alongside the large-scale paintings, Burgess creates collages which reflect his love of vintage graphics, particularly those from the 1930s–50s, a “golden age” in American graphic design and advertising. Burgess has been collecting vintage American ephemera for many years; this ephemera is then unapologetically deconstructed, cut up into tiny pieces and reconstructed into visual and verbal poems, dazzling multi-coloured pop art pieces, and constructed cityscapes.

Burgess has completed many important commissions for public and private institutions including Crossrail (London’s largest ever engineering project), Cunard, APL shipping, Mandarin Oriental Hotels, a new medical centre in San Jose, California and most recently, Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital in London.

In 2021 Andy Burgess started creating a series of site-specific artworks for the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital in London. The project, initiated by CW+ – the official charity of the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital NHS Foundation Trust – and facilitated by Cynthia Corbett Gallery, which represents Burgess internationally, aims to improve and enhance the NICU environment for patients, relatives and staff.

Working together with the NICU team, Burgess was reminiscing on the hospital’s neighbourhoods and its iconic views, sights and buildings in collaboration with hospital staff. Known for his unique, abstract and colourful style, Andy has transformed selected London scenes into incredible artworks to create a warm and welcoming environment for both parents and staff to enjoy. The display, installed on the 16th June 2022, includes a panorama of London, an image of Albert Bridge and another of a London Underground station. Additionally, Andy produced two smaller scale abstract pieces developed from the colour palettes of his larger works, which were gifted as part of the commission. CW+ also acquired two existing works by Andy for the unit through Cynthia Corbett Gallery.

Burgess’s collectors include the Booker prize-winning author Kazuo Ishiguro, actor and writer Emma Thompson, the Tisch family in New York, Beth De Woody, Board Member of The Whitney Museum and Richard and Ellen Sandor in Chicago, who have one of the top 100 art collections in America.

Andy Burgess has been represented internationally by Cynthia Corbett Gallery since 2004.

Elaine Woo MacGregor is a Scottish-born Chinese artist trained in the Glasgow School of Art. She graduated with a Bachelors Degree with honours, acquired a studio and began working as a full-time artist. MacGregor began to be noticed as a serious and thoughtful painter and her first solo exhibition was 'Portraits' in Glasgow. Her work encapsulates the world seen through the eyes of a cross-cultural artist. She uses eclectic mark making and imagery to create atmospheric and theatrical scenes. Although her painted stories are often fictitious, elements of the picture are based on real people, places and things. Elaine Woo MacGregor’s narrative is drawn from everyday life, dreams, films, and folklore. She works in the domestic tradition of great women artists like Berthe Morisot to Paula Rego.

​MacGregor has exhibited in galleries in Edinburgh, Glasgow, London, Cambridge and abroad. One of her works - 'Hotel No.4' - is in the public galleries collection, the Atkinson Art Gallery, Southport. MacGregor's work has been shown in the U.K, U.S.A, Australia and Thailand and critically recognised by virtue of the Dewar Arts Award, the James Torrance Memorial Award, the Hope Scott Trust Award, the Cross Trust Fund, Scottish Portrait Award, Jackson's Painting Prize, and Holly Bush Painting Prize.

Elaine Woo MacGregor is internationally represented by Cynthia Corbett Gallery since 2022.

2016 Young Masters Guest Artist and 2021 Focus On The Female Young Masters Award winner Emilie Taylor was born in 1980 in Sheffield, where she now lives and works. Her large-scale ceramics use heritage craft processes, particularly traditional slipware, to interpret and represent post-industrial landscapes. Emilie is interested in the pot as container and metaphor for how we seek to contain different communities within society. Beyond the studio she works with the communities represented in her work, and through interdisciplinary projects hopes to apply the alchemical quality of ceramics in a socially engaged context.

Emilie has completed residencies in the UK and abroad, and has exhibited at Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Ruthin Craft Centre, Gallery Oldham, and the Arts & Crafts House Blackwell. Her most recent solo exhibition (May Day, May Day, May Day) at Rugby Art Gallery and Museum concluded 11th of July 2021. Her work forms part of public and private collections.

Recently Cynthia Corbett Gallery & its not-for-profit art initiative Young Masters Art Prize were invited by the Michelangelo Foundation to feature Emilie Taylor's artwork in their inaugural Homo Faber exhibition in Venice during the Biennale d'Arte in April 2022.

Alastair Gordon is a London based artist and lecturer. Works feature in various public, corporate and private collections including the Simmons and Simmons Collection and Beth de Woody Collection. Recent solo exhibitions at the Ahmanson Gallery, Los Angeles and First Things Gallery, New York. He was awarded the inaugural Shoosmiths painting prize in 2014 and has been shortlisted for various other awards including the Dentons Art Prize and Jacksons Painting Prize this year.

Central to Alastair's practice is the notion of a painting as a cultural artefact. At first these are paintings about paintings: images that oscillate between artefact and artifice. Certain questions emerge about the replication of the image, craft of the artist and certainty of the viewer. Notions of authenticity lie at the heart of Gordon’s artistic enquiry. He finds himself looking for evidence of the real thing. Artists’ materials such as masking tape and paper are rendered in paint to appear as taped or pinned on a wooden surface, a practice that refers to a specific form of illusionism that proliferated in XVII century Northern Europe called quodlibet (Latin “what you will”). As Jean Baudrillard wrote in The System of Objects: “We are fascinated by what has been created…because the moment of creation cannot be reproduced.”

Alastair debuted his work with the Cynthia Corbett Gallery at London Art Fair in January 2020 – and Scope NY March 2020 to great critical and collector response. Since then, Gordon’s work has been repeatedly featured in exhibitions by the gallery and most recently was debuted with great success at Art on Paper fair in New York.

Alastair is course leader for Professional Practice at the Leith School of Art, Edinburgh where he also coordinates their graduate residency programme. He was recently artist in residence for the City and Guilds of London Art School. He draws every day and works out of his South London studio where he is currently working on new paintings.

UK-born Matt Smith is well known for his site-specific work in museums, galleries and historic houses. Using clay, textiles and their associated references, he explores how cultural organisations operate using techniques of institutional critique and artist intervention. He is interested in how history is a constantly selected and refined narrative that presents itself as a fixed and accurate account of the past and how, through taking objects and repurposing them in new situations, this can be brought to light. Of particular interest to him is how museums can be reframed into alternative perspectives.

"What museums collect, and what this tells us about what society deems important, is an ongoing fascination to me. Recent events have shown how important objects, and particularly sculpture, are in the national debate about who we are and how we got here. I have worked with museums many times over the last decade and I love interpreting and curating works to help the widest possible audience feel welcomed and visible within the museums," – Smith says.

In 2015/2016, Matt was Artist in Residence at the Victoria and Albert Museum. In 2009 he received the ARC Award for Craft from Aspex Gallery and was awarded the inaugural Young Masters Maylis Grand Ceramics Prize in 2014. At Collect 2018, he was awarded "Object of the Show" by Ekow Eshun. For Collect 2020, Cynthia Corbett and Matt Smith co-curated a site-specific installation featuring textiles and black parian works. The curation was extremely well-received, and Matt was awarded the inaugural Brookfield Properties Crafts Council Collection Prize, which allowed the Crafts Council to purchase six artworks for the Council's collection. The V&A Museum's Design and Textiles department also acquired one of Matt's subversive embroideries. In June 2020 the Gallery’s long-standing partner Contemporary Art Society has acquired twelve ceramic and tapestry works by Matt Smith. This acquisition became a central focus for the displays at the Hove Museum. This exciting project was possible due to the Contemporary Art Society’s Rapid Response Fund in partnership with Frieze London, which is a new initiative supporting artists and museums during the Covid-19 pandemic. 2021 and 2022 saw Matt Smith’s textile and ceramic artworks join the collection of National Museums Northern Ireland.

Matt regularly exhibits his work at public collections including Coming Out, Walker Art Gallery 2017, A Place at the Table, Pallant House, 2014; Subversive Design, Brighton Museum and Art Gallery, 2013; DIY A Revolution in Handicrafts, Society for Contemporary Craft, Pittsburg, 2010.

Matt Smith started his career at the V&A before developing exhibitions at the Science Museum and the British Film Institute. After retraining as a ceramicist, his work has often taken the form of hybrid artist/curator. His large-scale solo shows have addressed themes including the legacy of colonisation in Losing Venus(Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford) and Flux: Parian Unpacked (Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge), LGBT visibility in Queering the Museum (Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, 2010) and Other Stories (Leeds University Art Collection, 2012). Matt co-directed and curated Unravelling the National Trust which saw over thirty artists working with contemporary craft (including himself) commissioned to respond to the histories of the National Trust properties Nymans House, Uppark House and The Vyne. Matt holds a practice-based PhD from the University of Brighton. The PhD explored the use of craft techniques in contemporary art by artists exploring identities. He is Professor of Ceramics and Glass at Konstfack University of the Arts, Stockholm and Honorary Fellow at the University of Leicester’s School of Museum Studies. His work is held in the collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Walker Art Gallery, Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery and the Fitzwilliam Museum as well as numerous private international collections.

Matt Smith is internationally represented by Cynthia Corbett Gallery