Summer Exhibition 2024

Deborah Azzopardi

b. UK

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

Deborah Azzopardi acquired her worldwide fame for the joyous Pop Art images she has created over the past 39 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 There’s plenty of art historical references from...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.

Deborah Azzopardi was awarded the Young Masters Focus On The Female Art Created During Lockdown Award 2021 for her work ‘Unabashed’.

Deborah Azzopardi is represented internationally by Cynthia Corbett Gallery.

Daisy McMullan

Born 1985, UK

Daisy McMullan is an artist making richly layered paintings that document the natural world; inspired by magical realism and the ever-changing soul of the landscape, her paintings use expressive colour and mark-making to create otherworldly interpretations of the everyday. Her shimmering work captures the glimmers of hope and joy to be found in the natural world, should we choose to look closely enough.

Daisy’s paintings feature the verges, lines and paths that mark out ways of navigating the world both physically and emotionally. They feature places she walks regularly; overlooked, common spaces that belong to everyone and no-one. They are small wildernesses, uncultivated and irregular. Daisy uses these to create imaginative compositions that play with sacred geometries of nature, with multiple layers of colour and glazes giving a sense of hidden depth and stories hidden within.

Each painting is a meditation on an interaction with the natural world – a rewilding of the mind, the self, the soul. The Romantic ideals of returning to nature, individual spirituality, and treading ancient paths to commune with the metaphysical are highly influential on the process of making these works. They also reference Dutch Golden Age still life amd forest floor painting, where life, death and spirit are carefully balanced and observed in sharply contrasting tones. The expressive mark making Daisy uses references Abstract Expressionism, particularly the work of Joan Mitchell and Lee Krasner. There is also a particular Englishness about the world depicted in Daisy's paintings that resonate with the work of Albert Durer Lucas or Lucien Freud's approach to paiting plants.

The works are records of nature, preserving the seemingly unimportant for a future time. However, they are as much about the technology and theory of painting, constant and rigorous experiments with colour, opacity, viscosity and temperature. Daisy uses a carefully chosen palette of colours to render plantlife in a uniqie way that gives feeling, texture and movement to her paintings.
Natural forms are built using combinations of free, expressive strokes, textural stipplings and folk art inspired lines forming leaves and petals. The use of tonal layers, similar in the construction of a screenprint, helps to build in movement and the tension of translucent and more opaque forms. A key technique of underpainting, inspired by past masters adds luminous depth. These ideas and techniques are built up gradually, adding colour and light in increments until a beautiful image finally emerges from the dark.

Daisy trained as a fine artist at Wimbledon School of Art and Camberwell College of Arts, receiving a BA(hons) in Painting in 2007. She later studied for a Masters in Curating at Chelsea College of Art and Design, and was awarded a two-year Research Fellowship in 2012 at Chelsea Space, a public gallery at the College. Daisy works now as an artist, educator and curator.

Daisy’s notable solo exhibitions include: Observed Imagined Remembered, Cass Art Kingston (2022), and Rewildings, Dorking Museum (2022). She has exhibited in group shows including HERO, Great West Gallery (2024), Abstract Worlds, Croydon Art Space (2023), Winter Group Show, Folkestone Art Gallery (2023), and the Young Masters Invitational Exhibition, The Exhibitionist Hotel (2023/24). Daisy made her debut at the British Art Fair at the Saatchi Gallery with Cynthia Corbett Gallery in 2023, and will return with a new body of work on linen in 2024. She was also shortlisted for the SAA Artist of the Year People’s Choice Award in 2022.

Daisy works from her studio in Brixton, south London, creating paintings and exhibitions that reflect on nature and place. The works become emotional documents, depicting unseen feeling as much as they record the world that we can see.

EMILIE TAYLOR

b.1980, Sheffield, UK

Emilie Taylor uses heritage crafts, particularly traditional slipware, to interpret and represent post-industrial landscapes. Emilie is interested in the vessel or container as a metaphor for how we seek to contain communities, and community rituals, within British society, and has an ongoing interest in the firing process as alchemically potent and symbolic of change. 

Her work offers new interpretation to the contemporary urban context and its severance with ties to past community rituals. Large pieces and installations blur the boundaries between Gallery and Museum, Fine Art and the anthropological elements of Craft.

Emilie Trained in Fine Art (BA hons First Class) at Liverpool John Moores, graduating 2001 and has a Masters in Art Psychotherapy that informs her ideas about the anthropological significance of making in communities and community ritual. She has lectured about her practice at the Royal College, Cheltenham Literature Festival, on behalf of Arts Council England and the Crafts Council. As well as at many universities and art institutions.

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. She had a solo exhibition (Tubthumping) which opened on March 8th 2023 at the National Civil War Centre. The body of work included in the show took as a subject the experiences of women in the early modern period and explored the similarities linking them and the experiences of women today. Her work forms part of public and private collections. In addition, 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.

In 2024 Emilie will be working with Bradford Museums to create new pieces for their collection and will also be working with the Stradling collection in Bristol to respond to the slipware ceramics of Sam Haile held in their collection. Both projects will culminate in exhibitions later in the year.

She will also be leading an ongoing project with women exiting the criminal justice system who will be creating ceramic work for exhibition in 2025.

Emilie Taylor is represented internationally by Cynthia Corbett Gallery and was the winner of the Focus On The Female Young Masters Art Award 2021.

MARGO SELBY

b. 1977, Eastbourne, UK

Selby is an artist and designer working with colour and geometric form in textiles. She makes handwoven artworks, and oversees the design work of the Margo Selby Studio for mill production and commercial textiles applications – her tenet being ‘Art Into Industry’ – an approach to making art that is akin to that of the ‘Old Masters’ and mistresses, with their expanded studios and public commissions.

Selby uses thread to create abstract geometric artworks that explore repetition and transition, symmetry and asymmetry, the dynamic and the stable. She is interested in the relationship between the body and the machine, hand and industry, craft and technology. The loom, and the disciplined nature of weaving as a practice, provides boundaries and constraints which can be tested. The orderly nature of the craft of weaving is reflected in the developing designs of the artworks. She is satisfied by rhythmic and uniform repetition – where each element of a composition is changed in a methodical progression.

Studied at Chelsea College of Art & Design and the Royal College of Art in London, with a term at Atelier National d’Art in Paris. She now teaches in various institutions, and has her own studio weaving workshops. In 2020, Margo was the recipient of the Craft Council’s Collect Open Award for her large scale textiles installation Vexillum at Somerset House, and, in 2021, the bi-annual Turner Medal for ‘Britain’s Greatest Colourist’. She also gave the Turner Lecture, reflecting on her practice. 2022 saw her showing at multiple applied arts and craft fairs including Collect, London Craft Week, London Art Fair. In 2023, Selby exhibited at Art Miami, British Art Fair and Collect.

Margo Selby is represented internationally by Cynthia Corbett Gallery

JONATHAN CLAUDE (AKA HARRY CORBETT)

Jonathan Claude's (born UK) artistic journey is deeply rooted in his upbringing, characterized by a rich exposure to music genres like jazz, blues, and rock, as well as a penchant for indulging in classic films on television — a pastime that endures to this day. Moreover, his fondness for the art of letter writing, which he continues to cherish, has garnered acclaim for his impeccable handwriting over the years.

Driven by a profound desire to express gratitude to departed artists for the profound joy they've imparted, Jonathan embarked on a unique endeavor: writing letters of appreciation to these luminaries. For him, there existed no compelling reason not to undertake this heartfelt gesture. Hence, the letters you encounter within his body of work serve as a testament to this ongoing dialogue between artist and muse.

"Growing up in the Midlands of England in the 1960’s, before I was a teenager, I was conscious of a revolution in the arts and in particular music.
This was clear because on the radio my earliest memories were of a Liverpool Group (The Beatles) who had a hit with 'She Loves You', which was their second number one single in Great Britain and their third hit single. Everyone was talking about it, even me and I was only five years old. As the decade progressed and the swinging sixties arrived, it was clear that this movement was far away from the Midlands of Great Britain where I resided. The swinging sixties was really a rather small movement in parts of London such as Carnaby Street or The Kings Road, and in a few other parts of the world, such as California.

On the 15th December 1969 as I left my school before I started at another one, John Lennon was performing at the Lyceum in London and in his band he had, Klaus Voorman, George Harrison, Eric Clapton, Jim Gordon, Keith Moon and Billy Preston and others. It all seemed like another world. I was wondering how I might connect with it and although I played the recorder at school I figured that this would not be my passport to engage with these Titans of Music and Entertainment.

Also if you wished to be entertained on the screen you had Alfred Hitchcock and many others and a new television series had started in Britain in 1968 called 'Dads Army' which fifty six years later we are still celebrating. All of this left a deep impression in my mind.

As Britain rather was diminishing in so many ways this was not the case in the arts. To engage with these performers that have passed away but gave so much enjoyment to so many I decided that I wanted to take myself back to a point in time and write to them to celebrate their work at various moments in their lives. Not just British performers but performers from other parts of the world that are no longer with us but continue to provide absolute joy.

So you now know why I write these letters."

Anne Françoise Couloumy

Highly acclaimed French painter Anne Françoise Couloumy, Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, has been named 'La Hopper Française' by the French press.

A student of Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs, she has exhibited in France since 1994 with great success. Mentored by XX century French painter Boris Taslitzky, whose paintings are in the Tate Gallery's collection, she has a unique pedigree. In contrast to Kamps – French by nationality and Northern European in her use and sense of light – Couloumy paints as if she spent her life on the foggy banks of Amsterdam' canals. The intimacy and the serene silence of Couloumy's quiet paintings are reminiscent of Hammershøi and Vermeer. Nonetheless, Couloumy doesn't fit in any particular school of painting and her work is timeless, classical and contemporary. There is an air of mystery that surrounds her work, which suits the artist as she has little time for explanation and analysis. A Couloumy painting is much more than just a painting, it is a reflection of life.

ISABELLE VAN ZEIJL

b.1978, Netherlands

In a contemporary art world that condemns beauty as camouflage for conceptual shallowness, championing high aesthetics is nothing short of rebellion. Dutch photographer Isabelle Van Zeijl takes female beauty ideals from the past, and sabotages them in the context of today. As a women she experiences prejudices against women; misogyny in numerous ways including sex discrimination, belittling/violence against women and sexual objectification. Van Zeijl aestheticises these prejudices in her work to visually discuss this troubling dichotomy, presenting a new way of seeing female beauty. An oppressive idealisation of beauty is tackled in her work through unique female character and emotion.

Van Zeijl is invested in her images. By using subjects that intrigue and evoke emotion, she reinvents herself over and over and has created a body of work to illustrate these autobiographical narratives. Her work takes from all she experiences in life - she is both model, creator, object and subject. Going beyond the realm of individual expression, so common in the genre of self-portraiture, she strives to be both universal and timeless.

Isabelle Van Zeijl, born and based in the Netherlands is an internationally acclaimed Fine Art Photographer. She was nominated for the Prix De La Photographie Paris, The Fine Art Photography Awards and was one of the winners of The Young Masters 2017 Emerging Woman Art Prize, London. Her work is held in prominent private & public collections in the USA, Europe, UK, Australia and Asia.

Isabelle Van Zeijl is represented internationally by Cynthia Corbett Gallery and was the winner of the Young Masters Emerging Woman Art Prize in 2017.

Ramon Omolaja Adeyemi

b.1978, Lagos, Nigeria

Through his painting, Ramon aims to make fleeting moments stand still through the strokes of brush and colour. The View from a Window is a landscape painting of enthusiasm born out of love for beautiful sceneries. It captured the essence of how far the eyes can see from a point of view. The significant feature of this painting is the interaction of nature with human settlement. There is no awkward interference in the structured settings of this settlement.

Ramon was born and educated in Nigeria, followed by a career working as Principal Technical Officer at the National Gallery of Art, Nigeria. He now lives and works in the UK. Recent exhibitions include the 19th Asian Art Biennale, Bangladesh, (2023), London Art Fair (2023), Manchester Art Fair (2022), Manchester Open Exhibition (2022), British Art Prize (2022), ‘Young Masters Autumn Exhibition’, The Exhibitionist, London (2022), ‘Artbox’, Projects Palma 1:0 (2022), Swiss Art Expo (2022), Sky Portrait Artist of the Year (2022), and ‘Beyond Landscapes’ curated by Cotton On Manchester at Saul Hay Gallery (2022).

Ramon Omolaja Adeyemi was a finalist for the Young Masters Art Prize 2023.

Tami Bahat

Born 1979, Israel

A deep love for imperfect beauty and the belief that art is in everyone fuel Bahat's portraiture. As a conduit to other lifetimes, she constructs stories of the past through the people of her present-day life. Inspired by the Old Masters, the series Dramatis Personae exhibits her personal connection to history and a deep longing for times that no longer exist.

She left school at the age of fifteen and was given guidance by her father who had taught at Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem. He encouraged her independent study through workshops and seminars of art history, photography, sculpture and design, further enhancing her creative vision. A series of family trips around the world exposed her to humanity as a whole and the myriad ways that people live, providing her with a keen awareness of the beauty and loss that an earthly existence brings, an undertone in much of her work.

Most recently Bahat has had solo exhibitions in Los Angeles, Australia and Chicago, and her work has been shown in prominent photography events, including Fotofever Paris, Scope NY, The Photography Show (AIPAD), as well as the LA Art Show.

Alastair Gordon

b.1979, Scotland, UK

“I don’t seek a view but a sense of place. From here the paintings are developed in the studio to appear as drawing boards and sketchbook work. Oscillating between hyperrealism and intuitive gesture, they both tame and subsume to the wilderness itself.” - as Gordon states.

Alastair Gordon is best known for highly illusionistic paintings (rooted in the quodlibet tradition) but he combines his heightened sense of realism with historical notions of intuitive wildness and British wilderness painting. Gordon makes paintings about paintings; works that oscillate between artifact and artifice. We are presented with landscapes as still lives and sketches as completed works. Certain questions emerge about authenticity, the painting process and how we consider notions of landscape today. The veracity of the object is constantly in doubt yet the wild is ever calling.

In making his works Gordon travelled to the outer reaches of the British Isles, undertaking a painting pilgrimage from the heights of the Lake District, depths of Caithness peat flows and furthest reaches of the Outer Hebrides. Sitting atop mountain peaks and sinking into peat bogs each work begins in the landscape.

Alastair Gordon is a London based artist and tutor and a course leader for the Graduate Residency Scheme at Leith School of Art, Edinburgh. Last year, Alastair was artist in residency for City and Guilds of London Art School followed by a parallel residency with PADA Studios in Lisbon.

Notable Alastair’s solo exhibitions: Quodlibet, Aleph Contemporary, UK (2021), Without Borders, Aleph Contemporary, UK, (2020), and at City and Guilds of London Art School, UK (2020) and Souvenirs from the Waste Land, Ahmanson Gallery, Los Angeles (2017), at First Things Gallery, New York (2017).

Notable group exhibitions include: LA Art Show, Cynthia Corbett Gallery, Los Angeles (2024), Miami Art Fair, Cynthia Corbett Gallery, Miami (2023), British Art Fair, Cynthia Corbett Gallery, London (2023), Chicago Expo, Cynthia Corbett Gallery, Chicago (2023), Here After, Bridge Projects, Los Angeles, (2022), Unpacking Gainsborough, Cynthia Corbett Gallery, London (2021), The Long Echo, Terrace Gallery, London (2021), The Just, Alpeh Contemporary London, (2020), The Collectors Room, JGM Gallery, London (2020), London Art Fair, Cynthia Corbett Gallery, London (2020), Summer / Winter Exhibition, Royal Academy, London (2020).

He was the inaugural winner of the Shoesmiths painting prize and co-recipient of the Dentons Art Prize. Gordon has been shortlisted for the Denton Art Prize, 2020.

Gordon’s work is found in numerous prominent private and public collections including Beth Rudin de Woody, New York; Simmons and Simmons, London; Ahmanson Collection, Los Angeles; Landmark PLC, London; Bow Arts Trust, London; The Royal Bank of Scotland Collection, and The Glasgow School of Art Alumni Collection.

Alastair Gordon is represented internationally by Cynthia Corbett Gallery.

FREYA BRAMBLE-CARTER

b.1991, UK

Freya Bramble-Carter is a London-based ceramics artist, known for creating contemporary designs, often strongly inspired by a balancing flow of femininity and masculinity, appreciative of the power of nature and the universe we live in. Freya combines her lifestyle of imagining and working with clay as well as her life experiences and personal philosophies of changing delusion and enjoyment in one. She tries to live in the most authentic way true for her, to learn about life and expand.

Freya’s work ranges from fine homewares including plates and bowls to large outdoor sculptural pieces, 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 and be a character of awe often by beauty and tactile appeal.

"We are a circle, infinite waters, we souls can’t be stopped."

In this new series for Collect 2024, Freya searches for the meaning of water and it’s continuous flow. The power of water in her life swimming everyday in appreciation as she talks to it. Water, the mover, destructor, basis of living organisms, blue reflecting the skies that have no end. A circle that has no start or end. Even a kink in the circle it follows and flows too. Water provides the vibrational centre to bring balance into balance. Is water a God ? What is water? What is a circle?

Before studying fine art at Chelsea College of Arts, Freya learned the craft of clay under her father Chris Bramble's guidance, and then built on this through teaching, but often enjoys the process of ‘unlearning’ the rules when it comes to making her own pieces. She relishes how you can do anything with clay, the fluidity of moulding and letting go. Every nuance of one’s touch and movement flows through the clay and imprints. Her awareness of this is a helpful tool, as clay is a teacher on many levels. Having always felt a strong physical connection to nature and growing up with clay at her fingertips, Freya allows flow and freedom in her work as well as some structure and strength. She believes in creating pieces that ‘impart with a piece of my soul’, that can become a spark of energy in the home.

Freya Bramble-Carter is represented by Cynthia Corbett Gallery.

SaeRi Seo

b. 1992, Korea

The ‘Moon Jar’ is a representative Korean traditional pottery of the Joseon Dynasty that has contributed the elevated reputation of Korean ceramics worldwide. Historically, the moon jar was associated only with male roles, as women were not allowed to produce or access the studio due to the belief that they brought bad luck. To overcome a childhood and adolescence coloured by this belief (and accompanying abuse), SaeRi began destroying her works to reveal her trauma, incorporating shapes from Korean representative ceramics as her cultural background influenced her mental struggles. By detonating the beautiful pottery, she stepped forward and started communicating with the world.

SaeRi Seo studied ceramics for her BA at Seoul Women’s University, and lwent on to complete a Masters in Ceramics and Makers at Cardiff Metropolitan University in 2022. Recent exhibitions and awards include: NAE Open 2023, New Art Exchange (2023), RBA Rising Stars Exhibition, The Royal Over-Seas League (2023), and nominated as a finalist for the BADA Art Award (2022).

SaeRi Seo was the winner of the Young Masters Emerging Woman Artist Award in 2023.

Miranda Boulton

b. 1973, Cambridge, UK.

"My paintings are about the passing of time, they are Memento Mori, reminding us of our mortality and the transience of life. I paint flowers, alive, beautiful, decaying, dying, haunting, life affirming, poignant, reassuring. Always at the height of their beauty they fade away. They cover the monumental and the everyday. My grandfather was an artist, he died before I was born, my grandmother kept his studio the same as the day he died. As a child I use to sneak into his mysterious studio and imagine talking with him about his work. These conversations made me want to paint, to recapture something of him and make it present again.” – Miranda Boulton

For Miranda Boulton painting is an ongoing conversation between the past and the present. She is fascinated by Flower Paintings from Art History, having spent a great deal of time looking at paintings by Morandi, Winifred Nicholson, Manet, Rachel Ruysch and Mary Moser to name a few. She absorbs their work and follows their brushstrokes as if listening in on a conversation. Memories of their paintings are used as the starting point for her own process, searching for a space where she has touched on the feel and presence of a painting from the past. There is an essence of the original, an acknowledgement of a time, place and history all in the mix. Flowers remind us of the fleeting, transient nature of life.

Colours slide and slip around the surface, large sweeping gestures made by hand or brush sit next to layers of impasto paint and carefully painted details. Areas of soft powdery spray paint collide with hard built-up oil paint. The canvas is turned to destabilise and shift the composition, giving fresh perspective to the process.

Boulton thinks of painting as a time-based medium; layers of paint are like age rings on a tree, each holding memories of brush marks and integral to the finished piece. Each painting is an ongoing conversation between past and present, an exploration of new forms from old imagery and narratives.

Miranda Boulton is a contemporary British painter who lives and works in Cambridge, UK. She studied Art History at Sheffield Hallam University and at Turps Banana Art School in London.

Boulton’s solo exhibitions to date include: ‘Lost In The Middle’, Newhall Art Collection, Cambridge, (2012) and ‘Outside In’, Madame Lillies Gallery, London, (2011). She has also exhibited in two-person exhibitions including ‘Double Time’, Arthouse1, London, (2019) and ‘Off Line/On Line’, Studio 1.1, London, (2015).

Notable group exhibitions include: ‘Goddesses on Sea’, Lido Stores, Margate (2023), Hamptons Fine Art Fair, Cynthia Corbett Gallery, USA (2023), ‘The Goddesses’, Terrace Gallery, London, (2023), Expo Chicago, Cynthia Corbett Gallery, USA (2023), British Art Fair, Saatchi Gallery, London (2023), London Art Fair, (2022), ‘Inspire 2022’, D Contemporary, London (2022), ‘This Year’s Model’, (Part II), Studio 1.1, London, (2021) ‘This Year’s Model’, (Part III), Studio 1.1, London, (2021), Royal Academy Summer Exhibition (2016 & 2019), ING Discerning Eye (2021), Young Masters Autumn Exhibition 2022, Young Masters Invitational at the Exhibitionist Hotel (2023-24), and ‘Staged by Nature’, Glyndebourne (2023).

In 2021 she won the Jacksons Painting Prize. Boulton took part in a residency with The Bothy in Glasgow for project titled ‘A Painter and A Poet’ Eigg, Scotland, in 2018, and in 2021 she was artist in residence at renowned department store Liberty London.
Miranda Boulton’s work in many private collections in the UK and internationally.

Miranda Boulton is represented internationally by Cynthia Corbett Gallery.

Elaine Woo MacGregor

b. 1981, UK.

"I am an expressive cross-cultural painter trained in the Glasgow School of Art 1999 - 2003. Rhythmic calligraphic brushstrokes, exacting moments of drawing, suggestive mark-making that bridges between figuration and abstraction, eclectic colour palette and painterly techniques of surface play all features strongly in my work. My painted stories and memories are of people based on my personal experiences and experiences of others found in books, films, fashion and photography. Painting for me is a voyage of discovery and a sensation felt. I want my viewers to peer through layers of paint, dapples of colour and a smudge of a mark to enter an alternative reality." – Elaine Woo MacGregor

MacGregor’s artistry offers a unique perspective, encompassing a fusion of cultures. Through her eclectic use of mark making and imagery, she weaves together atmospheric and theatrical narratives. While her painted stories may often be fictitious, they are rooted in real people, places, and objects.

Elaine Woo MacGregor is a Scottish-born Chinese artist trained in the Glasgow School of Art. She graduated with a bachelor’s degree with honours, acquired a studio and began working as a full-time artist.

MacGregor’s first solo exhibition was 'Portraits' in Glasgow. Recent exhibitions include her solo exhibition ‘Maman et Muses’, Patriothall Gallery, Edinburgh (2023), ‘Art on a Postcard’, Fitzrovia Gallery, London (2023 & 2024), LA Art Show, USA (2024), Women in Art Fair, Mall Galleries, London (2023), ING Discerning Eye, Mall Galleries, London (2023), Art Miami, USA (2023), Expo Chicago, USA (2023) Young Masters Autumn Exhibition, London (2022) and The British Art Fair, Saatchi Gallery, London (2022 & 2023). Notably, MacGregor was selected for Platform 2023 at the London Art Fair in 'Reframing the Muse', an exhibition curated by Ruth Millington, showing with The Cynthia Corbett Gallery.

MacGregor's work has been critically recognised by virtue of the Dewar Arts Award, James Torrance Memorial Award, Hope Scott Trust Award and the Cross Trust Fund. In 2022, she was a finalist in the Jackson's Painting Prize, received the Art Paisley Prize for outstanding work, and Velvet Easel Award. In 2023, she was awarded the RSA Blackadder Houston Mid-Career Travel Award. She will be travelling to Hong Kong and Shanghai for art research in 2024.

Artist Residencies include Visiting Artist and Lecturer in Guizhou Art Academy, China in 2008, and Artist in Residence with Partial Fellowship Award in Vermont Studio Center, Johnson, USA in 2009.

Woo MacGregor’s work is in British and international museum collections including Atkinson Art Gallery and Museum, UK, Art Gallery of South Australia, and 21C Museum and Hotel, USA and Didrichsen Art Museum, Finland.

Matt Smith

b.1971, Cambridgeshire, UK

Matt Smith is a multi award-winning artist based in Ireland and England. Acclaimed solo exhibitions include Losing Venus at the Pitt Rivers Museum, Flux: Parian Unpacked at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Who Owns History at Hove Museum and Queering the Museum at Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery. In 2015/16 he was artist in residence at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. He holds a PhD from the University of Brighton and was Professor at Konstfack University, Stockholm.

In 2020 he was awarded the Brookfield Prize at Collect and the Contemporary Art Society acquired a body of his work for Brighton Museum and Art Gallery. His work is also held in the collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Walker Art Gallery, Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, National Museum of Scotland, National Museum of Northern Ireland and the Crafts Council collection.

Trouble With History

The work is created from a found, vintage, needlepoint which is unpicked and restitched by the artist. Based on paintings by known male artists, the needlepoints were originally produced for amateur, anonymous sewers to stitch. Idealised figures are presented in bucolic settings, their faces replaced by the artist with neutral repeating patterns which disturb the working of the image. By interrupting without substituting a definitive alternative narrative, the work leaves the reinterpretation open for the viewer, questioning the heterosexual constraints of such imagery and prompting a re-consideration of the sitters' skin colour and identity and questioning the viewer’s complacent acceptance of such imagery. Works from the series are held by the V&A, the Crafts Council, Brighton Museum and the National Museum of Northern Ireland.

Matt Smith is a multi award-winning artist based in Ireland and England. Acclaimed solo exhibitions include Losing Venus at the Pitt Rivers Museum, Flux: Parian Unpacked at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Who Owns History at Hove Museum and Queering the Museum at Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery. In 2015/16 he was artist in residence at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. He holds a PhD from the University of Brighton and was Professor at Konstfack University, Stockholm.

In 2020 he was awarded the Brookfield Prize at Collect and the Contemporary Art Society acquired a body of his work for Brighton Museum and Art Gallery. His work is also held in the collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Walker Art Gallery, Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, National Museum of Scotland, National Museum of Northern Ireland and the Crafts Council collection.

Matt Smith is represented internationally by Cynthia Corbett Gallery and was the winner of the Young Masters Maylis Grand Ceramics Prize in 2014.

Elise Ansel

New York City, USA

In her work, Ansel translates Old Master paintings into a contemporary pictorial language. She mines art historical imagery for color and narrative structure. Her paintings use the Old Masters as points of departure. They move into abstraction by transforming the representational content, which is obfuscated, if not entirely obscured, by her focus on color, gesture and the materiality of the paint. Ansel’s work strikes a balance between conscientious precision and irrational improvisation.

She begins with a series of small spontaneous oil studies. Using renaissance methods and a grid, she transcribes these into large scale paintings. The large paintings embrace the choreography of the small works with an increased emphasis on color and gesture. Spontaneity, instinct and intuition eclipse rational, linear thinking during the process of making the small works. The large paintings, however, are more considered. Her work fuses accident and design, intuition and intellect, abandon and constraint. The real subject becomes the substance and surface of oil paint, the range of its applications, the ways it can be used to celebrate life.

Ansel deconstructs pictorial language and authorial agency in order to excavate and liberate meanings buried beneath the surface of the works from which her paintings spring. Old Master paintings were, for the most part, created by men for men. Abstraction allows her to interrupt this one sided narrative and transform it into a sensually capacious non-narrative form of visual communication that embraces multiple points of view.

Elise Ansel was born and raised in New York City. Ansel received a BA in Comparative Literature from Brown University in 1984. While at Brown, she studied art at both Brown and the Rhode Island School of Design. She worked briefly in the film industry before deciding to make painting her first order medium. Ansel has exhibited her work throughout the United States and in Europe. Her works are held in the permanent collections of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Krakow, the Bowdoin College Museum of Art and the Evansville Museum of Arts and Sciences.

Elise Ansel was nominated for the Young Masters Art Prize in 2013 and 2014.

Fabiano Parisi

b. 1977, Rome, Italy

“I use only natural light and execute my shootings early in the morning. The colours and chiaroscuro are at their best at this time of day and are left untouched by digital image manipulation software.” - Fabiano Parisi.

Parisi’s photographs have an honesty and integrity that is part of what makes them so inviting. The artist often selects buildings with frescoed walls, which create an illusion of a painterly surface in his photographs and a textural sensibility that belies the photograph’s flat surface. His method highlights the patina of these forgotten places.

The artist prints his work himself onto carefully chosen papers that enhance and maximise his colours and tones. Parisi has a strong relationship to Art History; the subject of the ruin was prevalent in the 18th and 19th Centuries, and interest is still strong today as evidenced by Tate Britain’s 2014 exhibition ‘Ruin Lust’. From painters such as Piranesi to Turner to Constable, Parisi is part of an important genre in art.

Fabiano Parisi began his career as a photographer following a degree in Psychology, coming to photography through a project photographing derelict asylums, which sparked his interest in the abandoned buildings which are the subject of his art practice today.

He has two ongoing series: The Empire of Light and Il Mondo Che Non Vedo (The World I Do Not See). The latter title is taken from a collection of poems by Fernando Pessoa, a hint at the poetic qualities of Parisi’s work.

What is so striking about Parisi’s work is his use of light, his relationship not just to history but to the theme of the ruin in Art History, and the composition and surface of his work. The power of Parisi’s work lies in the strength and command of his image-making, never straying from a strictly symmetrical approach, which allows the viewer to assume his viewpoint within the building, the wide-angle lens giving a sense of depth and breadth, without compromising on detail.

Parisi participated in the 54th Venice Biennale, Italian Pavilion and in Fotografia Festival Internazionale di Roma in 2012 at the Macro Museum.

In 2010 he was the winner of the Celeste Prize International for photography in New York; in 2012 he was shortlist for the Arte Laguna Prize, Venice where he was awarded a special Prize and in 2012 & 2014 he was shortlisted & announced finalist for the Young Masters Art Prize (a not-for-profit initiative presented by The Cynthia Corbett Gallery, London).

Fabiano Parisi was a finalist for the Young Masters Art Prize in 2012 and 2014.

Fabiano Parisi is represented internationally by Cynthia Corbett Gallery.

LLUÍS BARBA

Barcelona, Spain

Lluís Barba constructs his huge photographs with minute attention to detail. During the last twenty years he has developed his distinctive iconography, each work including visual references as people, paintings and his own artworks are transferred to new compositions. Just as artists have for centuries teased their audience with allegory and symbolism, so Barba’s jigsaw of iconography presents a maze of allegorical pathways, the symbolism of the historical sources overlaid with that of the contemporary characters, reinforced by our own personal knowledge and experience and the gravitas afforded by column inches, art criticism and saleroom prices. In Barba’s work we can read the growth of celebrity currency, commentary on recent history and also his own personal reflections: like many historical artists, Barba’s work is also ultimately a giant autobiography. We see photographs of collectors or visitors gathered from trips to international art fairs, including images he has been asked to take by people viewing his own work; there are his motifs such as barcodes, imprinted on his characters; and the rainbows and flowers, his symbols of hope. Wry humour and ironic cross-references colour his visual commentary, as we are invited to navigate between images in the contemporary world, instantly recognisable art historical references and the ever-changing landscape of celebrity icons. When you stand in front of one of Barba’s enormous photographs you are literally in the space of the art as it spreads out before you, sometimes extending into the viewing space with flooring or sculptures spilling from the image.

Born in Spain and educated at the Escola Massana Centre d’Art, Barcelona, Barba has exhibited his work in the United States, Europe, Latin America and Canada. His work is held in major public collections and his private collections include, Jorge M. Pérez, Miami, Rick & Kathy Hilton, California and Wendy Fisher, London.

Lluís Barba was one of the first finalists of the inaugural 2009 Young Masters Art Prize in London. The artist exhibited at the European Pavilion of the 2017 Venice Biennale.

Ashley January

b. 1987, Rantoul, Illinois, USA

Ashley January creates contemporary paintings informed by her maternal experience. Exploring themes of preeclampsia, premature birth, and birth trauma, her newest body of work continues to address the Black maternal mortality and morbidity crisis in America. She lives in Chicago with her family while working from home and her studio at Mana Contemporary.

Ashley became the first recipient of the Women’s Caucus for Art, 2022 Emerging Artist Award, and was selected as a finalist for the 2022 Artadia Chicago Award. In January 2023, Ashley had the second installment of her solo exhibition, Human | Mother | Black, at WesternIllinois University. Most recently, her works were featured in the New York group show, Fruits ofLabor: Reframing Motherhood and Artmaking at Apex Art. She was invited to participate in the Unit London (Voices) online group exhibition Naissance/Re-Naissance.

She was also included in the London Art Fair Platform curation through Cynthia Corbett Gallery. Additionally, Tufts University School of Medicine's Center for Black Maternal Health and Reproductive Justice, acquired paintings from her series. Her works have been exhibited in numerous venues including, The Young Masters Autumn Exhibition in London, UK; the South Side Community Art Center, Chicago, IL; Mana Contemporary, Chicago, IL; SoLA Contemporary, Los Angeles, CA; the Museum of Science and Industry, Chicago, IL; Viridian Artists Inc, New York, NY; Laguna Art Museum, Laguna Beach, CA; Pacific Art Foundation, Newport Beach, CA; and the Irvine Fine Arts Center, Irvine, CA. Recently, she was featured in the January 2023 issue ofLuxe Interiors + Design Chicago magazine.
Her paintings have also been featured in the television series, Kings of Napa, on OWN. In 2018, she was selected as a first-place award winner at the Woman Made Gallery’s Midwest Open in Chicago. In 2017, Ashley won the Beverly Bank Best of Show Award at the Beverly Arts Center’s juried competition. When asked about her sentiments towards Ashley’s work and practice, Dr. Joy West, MD, Obstetrician/Gynecologist at Roseland Community Hospital in Chicago, said, “It is fitting that your work, now installed at Roseland Hospital, will reach the women most impacted by birth trauma; the underserved, the systematically excluded, the forgotten. They will be uplifted simply by seeing themselves in your beautiful art. I’m certain of this. Thanks for creating and sharing all aspects of Human | Mother | Black.”

Ashley will be featured in the group show, Neighbors, South Shore Arts (2024), curated by Dorman + Torluemke from January 19 - March 16. Ashley earned her MFA in Painting from the Laguna College of Art and Design, Laguna Beach,CA in 2017 and her BS in Communication with an Advertising concentration and Minor in Studio Art from Bradley University, Peoria, IL in 2009.

Ashley will showcase paintings with Cynthia Corbett Gallery from her new series, Environments of a Heavy Joy, at EXPO Chicago in April (2024).

Ashley January is represented internationally by Cynthia Corbett Gallery.

Andy Burgess

b. 1969, London, UK

Lauded by Annabel Sampson, Deputy Editor of Tatler as “the next David Hockney” painter Andy Burgess, who hails from London but lives in Arizona, 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.

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.

Andy Burgess’s latest work combines two of his greatest artistic passions, mid-century and modernist architecture, and collage. In this new series of highly intricate pieces, Burgess has used hand painted paper to construct renditions of his favorite modern architecture. Replacing acrylic paint with gorgeous permanent inks he has introduced another level of textural interest. The ink adds a beautiful translucency and wash-like textures to the surface of the image…. making the finished work somewhat tapestry and mosaic like. The pleasure of these works lies in the complex shapes, the analogue quality of the fabrication and the sparkling crystalline colors. Those familiar with his work will recognize some of the iconic subject matter such as Frank Lloyd Wright’s wonderful Guggenheim Museum and famous Fallingwater residence as well as Los Angeles classics such as The Stahl House and other desert modern masterpieces. But there is an eclectic range of architectural subjects that spans decades and continents in a quest to do justice to the architecture of modern times!

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.

In March 2023, Burgess publicated of a new limited edition book of abstract ink on paper collages called Tiger’s Eye in conjunction with an exhibition at Laughlin Mercantile in Tucson, Arizona and the release of four luxurious silk scarf designs based on the collages.

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

CRISTINA SCHEK

b. Transylvania

Cristina Schek is the photosensitive kind. She thinks in pictures; her imagination is always in focus. A Transylvanian Surrealist now rooted in London, Schek crafts conceptual work that explores identity and the nature of representation, with literature, films, and art history as her muse. Completely self-taught in photography and far removed from traditional or documentary styles, the camera is merely a tool for the artist. Her true passion lies in storytelling—venturing into the unknown, layering, and crafting images into creative compositions.

Esteemed art critic Estelle Lovatt, FRSA, notes the departure from traditional representations in Cristina's work: “Away from the worn-out out-of-date academic portrait of the female muse, Cristina Schek’s attention-grabbing images are inspired by literature and history. I marvel at her unique quirky portraits of modern life, in interiors brimming with warm comfy chintz and cosy furniture. But the real clout and muscle comes from the lone woman masked, in her flowing gown, inspiring powerful messages of caution for women today. Different to a man’s representation of the female, Schek inspires us to be the victor not the victim. As a woman, though the lens of her eye, she created a new, unique, visual language influencing and motivating us to be as progressive and visionary as we are. To be assertive, bold, self-assured powerful, and confident. To develop and enlarge our value(s). To think, feminist weight solid enough, in images not just of her, but of you and me, in Schek’s sumptuous, surrealistic, delightful imaginings.”

Diving Upwards
"Everything real begins with the fiction of what could be. Imagination is therefore the most potent force in the Universe. Imagination is 'Diving Upwards'! And you can get better at it. It's the one skill in life that benefits from ignoring what everyone else knows. Over the long term, the future is decided by optimists. To be an optimist you don’t have to ignore the multitude of problems that arise, you just have to 'Dive Upwards' and imagine how much your ability to solve problems improves." Cristina Schek

"In my mind’s eye, I see carefully choreographed women and the sky-high lunar cycle of the Moon being celebrated. For (e)very good reason. The Moon’s gravity stabilises us. This image is an inspirational message; dream big and take chances. More than synchronised swimmers or water ballerinas, it’s Sisyphus rolling with huge stones as big as your troubles. Push giant rocks up the steep incline of life symbolising suffering, heaven forbid heaven bound, because you are strong enough. To wear a Titian-like shade of red swimsuit and bathing cap, a figure hugging skin-tight illusion of being naked, almost. Surely.

Rise up, propel yourself high. Believe. Nothing. Nothing is in the way to stop you. We are all capable of being top flyers, diving upwards and flippin’ hell. Being over the moon… The saying “Over the Moon” is used to describe how it feels when feeling extremely pleased and very, very, happy. Skyrocket, soar, fly. The sky isn’t the limit, since man walks on the moon, right? Right! More than a picture-maker, Schek is a visual influencer." Estelle Lovatt FRSA

Cristina Schek was awarded the Young Masters Focus On The Female Art Award Created During Lockdown 2021 for her work 'Florence Lightingale'.