WANAFOTO: United Kingdom

Showing posts with label United Kingdom. Show all posts

18/11/25

'Small is Beautiful' Exhibition @ Flowers Gallery, London + Online - 43rd Edition Featuring 140 Artists

Small is Beautiful - 43rd Edition

Flowers Gallery, London + Online

21 November 2025 - 10 January 2026

Katie Mawson (b. 1963)

Colour Narratives, 2025

Vintage book cloth, 18 x 18 cm

Alexandra Baraitser (b. 1971)

By Lamp Light, 2025

Oil on board, 21.5 x 18 cm

Adam Taylor (b. 1979)

Circle, two, 2025

Oil on panel, 22.5 x 17 cm

Flowers Gallery presents the 43rd edition of their renowned Small is Beautiful exhibition, taking place at the Cork Street gallery and online. Established in 1974, Small is Beautiful invites selected contemporary artists from all disciplines to contribute works with a fixed economy of size, each piece measuring no more than 7 x 9 inches.

Heidrun Rathgeb (b. 1967)

Cocoon, 2020

Egg tempura on gesso panel, 24 x 18 cm

Ayumi Matsuba (b. 1977)

Towards Home, 2025

Acrylic on canvas, 20.3 x 20.3 cm

Unskilled Worker

Milo wears his Crown, 2025

Gouache, pastel, pen, ink and charcoal

on Fabriano paper, 21 x 16 cm

An occasion for artists to explore scale in relation to their own practice, since its inception the exhibition has provided a rare opportunity to showcase smaller pieces by internationally-recognised names and discover new talents.

Here is a small selection of other works featured in this exhibition:

Maria Koshenkova

Faun's Flesh 02, 2016

Blown sculpted glass, hand polished, 14 x 21 x 14 cm

Sheila Vollmer

Pezzo, 2025

Wood found Piano keys, hinges, paint, 20 x 19 x 21 cm

Terence Wilde

Devine, 2020

Ceramic and mixed media, 19 x 14 x 9 cm

Sarah Longworth-West

After Endless, 2025

Oil paint, oil pastel and spray paint

on pigmented gesso panel, 23 x 18 cm

Monique Lovering

Fleeting, 2025

Mixed media, 23 x 18 cm

Kristin Schnell

Birds on Stage 13A, 2022-2023

Photography Hahnemühlen Photo Rag Paper, 21 x 16 cm

Sue Kennington

Split, 2025

Oil on linen, 18.4 x 15.2 cm

Pippa Young

Threads of history that cling to me, 2025

Oil on cradled panel, 18 x 12.5 cm

Jennifer McRae

Boy Fish Kite, 2025

Oil on linen, 22.9 x 17.8 cm

Karolina Albricht

As Day is Equal Night, 2025

Oil on panel, 16 x 12 cm

Gill Rocca

REALM XVI, 2025

Oil on birch ply, 11 x 16 cm

Small is Beautiful features approximately 140 artists, with notable inclusions from Olivia Bax, Ken Currie, Helen Downie (Unskilled Worker), Elger Esser, Nigel Hall, Maggi Hambling, Claerwen James, Laurence Noga, and Tai Shan Schierenberg, amongst many more.

FLOWERS GALLERY

21 Cork Street, London W1S 3LZ

www.flowersgallery.com

15/11/25

Hawaiʻi: a Kingdom Crossing Oceans Exhibition @ British Museum, London - A dazzling celebration of the rich artistry of Hawaiian makers

Hawaiʻi: a kingdom crossing oceans

British Museum, London

15 January – 25 May 2026

A bold new exhibition at the British Museum examines the compelling history of Hawaiʻi and its long-standing ties with the United Kingdom. Hawaiʻi: a kingdom crossing oceans is a dazzling celebration of the rich artistry of Hawaiian makers, past present and future, the global journeys of Hawaiian royals and leaders, and the enduring resonance of their story in today's world.

kapa (barkcloth)

Kapa (barkcloth) is made from the inner bark (bast) of the paper mulberry and other plant fibres. As a medium, kapa is a connector between the land, the people and the gods. Different forms of kapa had many uses, from everyday life to ritual practice, including as chiefly garments, spatial dividers, blankets and wrappings for bones.

The exhibition commemorates 200 years since a series of events including the visit of Hawaiian King Liholiho (Kamehameha II) and Queen Kamāmalu to London with a royal delegation to seek alliance and protection from the Crown. This journey to the capital included a visit to the British Museum – the first record of Native Hawaiian aliʻi (chiefs and royals) at the Museum. Building from this moment, which marked a turning point in the shared history of the kingdoms of Hawaiʻi and the United Kingdom, the exhibition tells a compelling story of movement, allyship and cultural exchange.

Portrait of Kamehameha II and Portrait of Kamāmalu, 1824

Hand-coloured lithographs by John Hayter

These portraits realised by British court artist John Hayter represent Hawaiian King Liholiho and Queen Kamāmalu. They were made in London while the king, the queen, and a Hawaiian royal delegation accompanying them awaited an audience with George IV.

Settled around AD 1000 by skilled Polynesian seafarers navigating by the stars and following the flight of migratory birds, the Hawaiian archipelago is often remembered in the UK as the place where Captain James Cook lost his life during a voyage of exploration in the islands in 1778–79. Hawaiʻi: a kingdom crossing oceans acknowledges this moment while focusing on movements, stories and voyages initiated from Hawaiʻi itself. Shaped together with Native Hawaiian knowledge-bearers, the exhibition introduces audiences to a remarkable and seldom-seen collection of early Hawaiian treasures combined with striking contemporary works, tracing the journeys that brought these works to London and reflecting on their continued meaning for the people of Hawaiʻi today.

ʻUmeke kiʻi (bowl with figure)

This bowl likely represents a chiefly person in a serving position. Their high status is indicated by their headdress and loincloth.

The exhibition features around 150 extraordinary objects and artworks including many never seen in the UK. Among the highlights is a magnificent ʻahu ʻula (feathered cloak) sent in 1810 by the first king of unified Hawaiʻi, Kamehameha I, to King George III, the largest known example of its kind. Lent by His Majesty The King from the Royal Collection, the cloak will be on display for the first time in over 100 years, alongside the Hawaiian king's original letter requesting support and protection from the British Crown.

Kiʻi (image) of the god Kū

This kiʻi (image) represents Kū, a Hawaiian god whose realm includes warfare and governance. This god figure probably originates from a religious site on the island of Hawaiʻi, the largest of the Hawaiian archipelago. It may have been brought to England about 200 years ago by Hawaiian king Liholiho (Kamehameha II), who came to London to seek alliance and protection from the British Crown. He stands here wearing a loincloth, which was made for him and fitted by Native Hawaiian cultural practitioners.

Opening the space and greeting the visitors on the stairs of the Great Court is a powerful, nine-foot kiʻi (image) of the god Kū, the god of warfare and governance, dressed with a contemporary loincloth and standing atop a pole rediscovered inside a historical plinth ahead of the exhibition. A finely carved drum accompanied by an ancient chant recounting early Polynesian migrations to Hawaiʻi pulls the visitors into the gallery. Inside, a stunning bowl with figure, recently returned from loan to Hawaiʻi's Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum, embodies the continued movements of people and objects between the Pacific and the United Kingdom, while the Anglo-Franco proclamation of 1843, on loan from The National Archives, highlights the UK and France's formal recognition of Hawaiʻi's independence and emphasises diplomatic bonds between these nations.

The making of Hawaiʻi: a kingdom crossing oceans is grounded in a renewed curatorial approach developed with Native Hawaiian knowledge-bearers. A co-stewarded process, the creation of the exhibition involved community partners in a holistic manner, from the shaping of the narrative to the design of the gallery, the meticulous conservation of ancestral treasures and the inclusion of ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi (Hawaiian language) throughout the space.

Kapulani Landgraf

ʻAuʻa, Portrait of Haunani-Kay Trask

Photographic print

ʻWe are not American’, declared Native Hawaiian political leader and scholar Haunani-Kay Trask (1949–2021). She was speaking on the hundredth anniversary of the 1893 coup that overthrew the Hawaiian Kingdom. Trask is depicted here by the artist Kapulani Landgraf as part of a series of 108 photographic portraits of Kānaka ʻŌiwi (Native Hawaiians). As well as Trask’s famous declaration, Landgraf has added ‘He hawaiʻi au mau a mau’ (‘I am Hawaiian forever and ever’), a continuing affirmation of Hawaiian identity.

Building from years of collaborations through the Benioff Oceania Programme (2020-2024), the show highlights a commitment to transforming and humanising museum practice – a dimension that is made palpable through a trail of content that 'breaks the fourth wall' to offer visitors a glimpse into this collective process. As objects, people and voices gather in the space, the gallery becomes a meeting ground, bringing agency and purpose into view and showing how the stories on display were shaped – stories as relevant today as they were two centuries ago.

Dr Alice Christophe, Curator and Head of Oceania at the British Museum said: 'This co-stewarded exhibition is a tribute to Native Hawaiian makers, past and present. At its core, it tells the story of the deep and layered relationship between Hawaiʻi and the United Kingdom, reflecting on care, sovereignty and the complexity of allyship. We hope this show will spark conversations and uplift people in the archipelago and beyond.'

Nicholas Cullinan, Director of the British Museum commented: 'Hawaiʻi: a kingdom crossing oceans embodies the Museum's commitment to working with communities to tell shared histories in new ways. This extraordinary exhibition not only reveals the beauty and significance of Hawaiian culture, but also highlights the journeys of people, objects and stories across time and oceans, showing how these connections continue to resonate and inspire today.'

BRITISH MUSEUM, LONDON

The Joseph Hotung Great Court Gallery

www.britishmuseum.org

23/04/24

Artist Loriel Beltrán @ Lehmann Maupin, London — "To Name the Light" Exhibition

Loriel Beltrán: To Name the Light

Lehmann Maupin, London

May 14 – June 22, 2024

Sculpture is durational in a way that painting is not. Painting can be observed in a glance, whereas sculpture has to be explored in time and space. I try to bring this sculptural animation to my wallworks while keeping that “glance” effect of painting. Painting is like a container where everything compresses into this one thing, whereas sculpture expands into more ambiguity.
—Loriel Beltrán

Lehmann Maupin presents To Name the Light, the London debut of Miami-based, Venezuelan-born artist LORIEL BELTRÁN (b. 1985). Featuring five new paintings, including the monumental work Total Collapse (Miami / Seoul), 2024, the exhibition foregrounds the artist’s engagement with time––geological, biological, historical, linguistic––as a conceptual framework to explore the phenomenological effects of light, color, and materiality. This exhibition is accompanied by the artist’s fully illustrated catalogue, including an essay by curator Katherine Rochester.

Loriel Beltrán has become known for his sculptural accumulations that poetically combine aspects of painting and sculpture. Employing custom-made molds and layers of paint, each work is produced through a meticulous process of pouring, embedding, compressing, drying, slicing, and finally assembling each vibrantly pigmented cross section into an abstract composition. Loriel Beltrán’s paintings materialize color in its full complexity in such a way that recalls the work of abstract painter and theorist Joseph Albers (1888-1976), whose exacting investigation of chromatic interaction expanded the possibilities for modern color theory. Albers asserted that “as basic rules of language must be practiced continually, and therefore are never fixed, so exercises toward distinct color effects never are done or over.” Loriel Beltrán has developed his own chromatic language that also incorporates an element of chance in the interplay between material viscosity, gravity, and time. The resulting images are prismatic, as though color and light are emanating from every visual cut / break in the composition.

Total Collapse (Miami / Seoul), 2024, the centerpiece of the exhibition, is the literal and metaphorical collapse and compression of the body of work the artist produced for his recent exhibition at Lehmann Maupin, Seoul. Beltrán has incorporated residual elements and pieces of works from that show into the compressed layers, making the palette a register of prior paintings. Seemingly frozen in a transitional state of becoming and disintegrating, between representation and abstraction, the painting is composed of striated sections of typically discordant pigments––vibrant blues, reds, greens, and yellows are placed next to areas of deep maroons and browns, next to pastel pinks, purples, and blues––to surprising and sometimes technicolor effect. In a recent interview with the artist, curator Katherine Rochester states, “Beltrán's work applies increasing pressure to the distinctions between categories that organize our anthropocentric view of the world. Nature and culture, science and philosophy, language and image, sculpture and painting are all subjected to a series of artistic operations that create new forms from a hybrid use of references and materials. ‘What remains on the other side of total collapse?’” For Loriel Beltrán, it seems that what remains is an endless set of possibilities in the undefined space of perception.

While Total Collapse draws from the artist’s own personal painting history, other works in the exhibition, like Sulfur Aerosol, 2024 and Dark Path / Dark Past, 2024, skillfully traverse art history by exploring the genre of landscape painting, drawing inspiration from the legacy of early 19th-century Romantic painters such as J.M.W. Turner and Caspar David Friedrich. The sense of awe, mystery, and grandeur that Turner and Friedrich sought to invoke in their atmospheric impressions of the natural sublime serve as a touchstone for Loriel Beltrán. While he employs quite different techniques, Beltrán is interested in encouraging a similarly direct viewing experience that connects us with our surroundings on an emotional and spiritual level, inviting the possibility of infinity and wonder into the gallery. In Sulfur Aerosol, Loriel Beltrán depicts an acidic skyscape composed of layers of cotton candy pink, baby blue, and mustard yellow pigment. The surface of the painting vibrates with an alluring and ominous intensity, invoking in the viewer a similar sense of overwhelm to that induced by contemplation of the rapidly advancing effects of climate change. For Loriel Beltrán, the work is open to a variety of interpretations. He explains, “It has a toxic but seductive quality, the kind we usually get from technology and the idea of ‘progress’ and our curiosity for the next thing.”

In Dark Path / Dark Past Loriel Beltrán depicts a night scape that is created through an ombre effect––deep maroon transitioning into deep verdant green. Throughout, there are hints of bright yellow, blue, purple, and pink that suggest a scattering of objects, debris, or perhaps even people. The title alludes to the dark path / past of humanity, one marked with a violence that has had an irreparable impact on the landscape. Here as with the other works in the exhibition, Loriel Beltrán employs the language of abstraction to grapple with the complexity of human history, the vastness (and incomprehension) of the natural world, and indescribable physical experience of light and color. What captivates him, especially, is the profound connection between color––a manifestation of light––and its ties to substances originating from the sun, extracted from minerals, and developed into pigments.

Together the works in To Name the Light offer an excavation, a dissection, a dispersion and deciphering of time and history––personal, shared, and that of painting. Previously, Loriel Beltrán described the interplay between chosen combinations of colors as “panels of code;” rather than representing an image, they comprise a distinct visual language, replete with numerous possibilities for imagery. Loriel Beltrán transforms the code into a rich repository of accumulated knowledge, experience, memory, and signification.

LEHMANN MAUPIN

1 Cromwell Place, South Kensington, SW7 2JE London

www.lehmannmaupin.com