Into My Arms
Sonya Derviz, My-Lan Hoang-Thuy, Shamiran Istifan and Li Li Ren
PV Wednesday 18 January, 6 - 9pm
19 January - 4 March 2023
From the ether, the gentle uncanny. Glimpses seemingly through windows; angelic figures in a state of embrace; stalactites congealing on electric chorals: the phantasmagoric particles of life on earth. A never-ending history of surrealism, modernised and mechanised. Across painting and sculpture, Derviz, Hoang-Thuy, Istifan and Ren look to comfort, voyeurism and the spiritual as inexplicable embellishments of the mundane, constant renegotiations of situation, mind and body.
Sonya Derviz (b. 1994) lives and works in London. She graduated with a BA in Fine Art from Slade School of Fine Art in 2018, having previously completed her Foundation Diploma at Central Saint Martins. Solo exhibitions include: The eyes have all the seeming, of a demon's that is dreaming, Daniel Benjamin Gallery, London (2022); and Pas de Corps, V.O Curations, London (2018). Selected group exhibitions include: First Light, curated by Hector Campbell, Collective Ending, London (2022); Inside Out, The Artist Room, London (2022); It Seems So Long Ago, Matthew Brown, Los Angeles (2020); Minimal | Maximal, LVH Art, London (2019); Parfum d’épines, Phillips x V.O Curations, Paris (2019); and Paintings by, Alex Vardoxoglou, London (2019).
My-Lan Hoang-Thuy (b. 1990) lives and works in Paris. She graduated from the Ecole Duperré in 2015, and the Beaux-Arts de Paris in 2018. In 2018, she was nominated for the Prix des Amis des Beaux-Arts, won the Graduate Photography Award, and then exhibited at the Salon de Montrouge. She participated in the Artpress Biennial of Young Artists at the Museum of Modern Art in Saint-Etienne in 2020. Selected solo exhibitions include: Belle Orchidée, Pissenlit Passable at Galerie Mitterrand, Paris (2022); Chez Espagnolveu, 32 rue des Ormeaux, Paris (2020); and Pale Violet, Galerie Derouillon, Paris (2019). Selected group exhibitions include: Cloud Point, Paradise Row, London (2022); Making Worlds Exist, Asia Now Art Fair, Paris (2021); Scratching the Surface, Galerie Derouillon, Paris (2021); Canons, Galerie Derouillon, Paris (2020); The Plates of the Present, Centre Pompidou, Paris (2020); Salon Jeune Création, Fondation Fiminco, Romainville (2020); and Salon Approche, Le Molière, Paris (2019). Hoang-Thuy will be the subject of a solo exhibition at the Maison Européenne de la Photographie, Paris, in 2023.
Shamiran Istifan (b. 1987) lives and works in Zurich. Istifan's visual arts practice focuses on layered social dynamics, motivated by her personal experience of the way class, gender and religion shape collectivism, politics and personal relationships. Recent solo exhibitions include: Precious Pipeline, Rose Easton, London (2022); Law & Order, Kulturfolger, Zurich (2021); G by Destiny, All Stars, Lausanne; and Micro Entities, Material, Zurich (2020). Selected group exhibitions include: Reflection is the Daughter of the Scandal, Angela Mewes, Berlin (2021); As We Gaze Upon Her, Warehouse421, Abu Dhabi (2021); Depuis des Lunes, Urgent Paradise, Lausanne (2021); 5th Floor, Centre d’Art Contemporain, Geneva (2021) and Nour el Ain, Karma International, Zurich (2021). In September 2021, she was awarded the Werkshau Prize by Kanton of Zurich for her work Ex Amore Vita: Ladies’ Room (2021).
Li Li Ren (b. 1986) is a sculptor living and working in London. She uses tactile materials ranging from the soft and ethereal to the hard and heavy to create intimate narratives in space. She gained her BA Fine Art from Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London, in 2010, and her MA Sculpture from the Royal College of Art, London, in 2017. Her first two solo exhibitions have been held at institutional spaces: Frantumaglia, Qimu Space, Beijing (2021) and Sunset as Burning Bruise, Magician Space, Beijing (2022). Select group exhibitions include: Memorias del subdesarrollo, Qimu Space, Beijing (2021); In/Out, Guardian Art Center, Beijing (2020); Silence in Violence, Spectrum Art Space, Shanghai (2018); and Camden Arts Centre, London (2017).
ALL NIGHT
Louis Blue Newby, Eloise Hawser, and Mimi Hope & Ben Galyas
PV Thursday 10 November, 6 - 9pm
11 November 2022 - 14 January 2023
ALL NIGHT; dance music, sexuality and industrial waste. The mechanisms of information distribution continue to warp and accelerate. Newby, Hawser, Hope, and Galyas look to draw connections between cultural artefacts in relation to this immutable change. Pornography, rave fliers, and newspapers are stacked, smothered, and soaked. Taken out of circulation, the uncertain and unstable surfaces of these works solidify the ephemeral nature of the printed image. Such production confronts the very meaning and direction of the source material. Often distributed and discarded en masse, their lustre fading as night turns to day, these images meet their disfigurement and ultimate demise in the liminal spaces of the city.
Louis Blue Newby (b. 1996) graduated from his BA at Chelsea College of Arts in 2018 and recently completed the MA programme at the Slade School of Fine Art. Exhibitions include: Sessions Arts Club (forthcoming; November 2022), The Artist Room at the Tom Of Finland Foundation Arts & Culture Festival (2022); SKINFLICKS, Xxijra Hii (2022); MELTDOWN, Ridley Road Project Space (2022); JUDD, Barbican Arts Group Trust (2022); healthy pink, springseason (2020). In 2019, Newby was selected as part of Bloomberg New Contemporaries. Other awards include, the OMNI Artist Award (2021) and the The This is This Award (2018). Newby’s moving-image work South Florida Sky, a collaboration with artist Laila Majid, was selected as part of the Dazed X Circa Class of 2022.
Eloise Hawser (b. 1985) is a conceptual sculptor and mixed media artist, living and working in London. She has exhibited extensively in the UK and internationally. Her installation The Tipping Hall was presented at the Istanbul Biennial in 2019, before being exhibited at the Montpellier Contemporain in 2020. Her first UK solo institutional exhibition, Lives on Wire, was presented by the ICA in 2015, with a major exhibition at Somerset House, by the deep, by the mark, shown three years later. Other shows include History of Nothing (White Cube, 2016), Weight of Data (Tate Britain, 2015), and Surround Audience (New Museum, New York, 2015). Her works can be found in several institutional collections, such as Tate Britain and Vienna’s MUMOK.
Mimi Hope (b. 1994) lives and works in London. Exhibitions include: Victoria Miro, London (2022); South Parade, London (2022); Alex Vardaxoglou, London (2021); Koenig Galerie, Berlin (2020); Sarabande Foundation & Burberry, London (2020); Palazzo Monti, Italy (2019); Supplement, London (2018). In 2020, Hope graduated with the Class of 2020 at Mountain School of Arts, LA. Residencies and awards include Cubitt Artists, where she is a current resident; Palazzo Monti, Italy (2019); the Sarabande Foundation, London (2018). In 2018, Hope was selected as part of Bloomberg New Contemporaries.
Ben Galyas (b. 1994) is an artist living and working in London. After graduating from Chelsea College of Art in 2017 he was awarded the This is This prize for contemporary sculpture. He runs Premature, a record label focusing on archival and experimental electroacoustic music, collaborating with artist and queer theorist Terre Thaemlitz (aka DJ Sprikles) on Ben loves Terre loves Robin. Recent exhibitions include Yamamoto Keiko Rochaix, London, and South Parade, London.
Marieke Bernard-Berkel
Preludes
PV Thursday 29 September, 6 - 9pm
30 September - 5 November 2022
I am moved by fancies that are curled
Around these images, and cling:
The notion of some infinitely gentle
Infinitely suffering thing.
Preludes, T.S. Eliot
Sherbet Green presents Preludes, the first solo show from artist Marieke Bernard-Berkel.
As in Eliot’s preludes, the paintings presented here, acid lined, and bulbous from the layered paintwork, finger at the edges of a fully-fledged realisation – a story that has not reached its arch. From photographs, Bernard-Berkel renders bucolic countryside scenes, dioramic panoramas in luminescent tones. Distorted into a toxic muddiness that itself gives way to new imaginings, the works become lurid, sublime warnings.
Marieke Bernard-Berkel (b. 1988) is a French-German artist living and working between London and Paris.
She received her MA Fine Art from Beaux Arts Paris in 2013. Recent group shows include at Radicants, Paris (2022), Paradise Row, London (2022) and PUBLIC Gallery (2022).
