LONDON ART FAIR
Please join us on stand G4b
20 - 24 JANUARY 2027
Join us for a glass of wine at the Private view on the 19 JANUARY 2027at the Business Design Centre, Islington, N1 0QH
London Art Fair is London's premier art festival in the heart of Islington. Discover and buy art from an exceptional line-up of modern and contemporary art galleries from across the globe, as well as ourselves, enjoy curated displays via the annual Museum Partnership, engage with an inspiring programme of talks and tours and explore new themes within Encounters and Platform.
We are extremely proud to represent
Sue Williams A'Court
Justine Formentelli
Fi Hunter
Robyn Litchfield
Mandy Payne
Nancy Qin
Tim Steward
Julie Wigg
For complimentary tickets please contact us here
SU E W I L L I A M S A ' C O U R T
Sue Williams A’Court’s practice explores the notion of the visual sublime working within painting, collage and drawing. She employs re-imagined landscapes as a trigger for encounter or contemplation; Landscape not as a topographical record but as a medium to visually describe a state of mind.
She references and appropriates from historical landscapes to present them in a new context. In nature she feels her mind is more enticed into a state of reverie out of the analytical brain shifting to a more divergent focus.
She is interested to explore these shifts in perspective and ways of being in her paintings. The tension between the figuration of the illusory landscape forms and the tactile more painterly background alludes to our unique human ability to hold contrasting mental states in the same psychological space, the relation-ship between the mind and the body and the possibility of transcendence.
Her interest has been formed by her meditation practice and by the ideas of pre-eminent psychiatrist and writer Iain McGilchrist in his book “ The Master and His Emissary-the Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World”, presenting his research on the hemisphere differences and the different perspectives they have in constructing our current experience and impact on our society.
Sue Williams A’Court’s exquisitely borrows details from Arcadian landscapes of historical works to create a series of ‘portraits’. Exploring the way we subconsciously see human forms in the world around us, the paintings’ muted surface evoke Victorian photographs, yet the faces within emerge from delicately interwoven trees, paths and boulders. Playing with ideas of identity, and perception questioning reality, the portraits are landscapes of our own imagination, a state of mind rather than a specific location. Hovering ambiguously between our inner and outer worlds, their mesmerizing, miniature scale invites viewers to lose themselves in an intimate, contemplative reverie in which we no longer feel wholly separate from what we observe.
Regarding the work for the group show, curated by Julie Wigg for Darle and the Bear - 'Some Roses and Their Phantoms', Sue wrote: "I feel the landscape content of my painting transforms whilst I make the work from the original historical reference to have a certain mysterious creature quality that emerges almost unconsciously - the subject matter of my work presents a state of mind and is inspired by the concept of female divine in nature. I resonate with the strange forms Dorothea Tanning refers to as “phantoms” and have always been inspired by surrealist ideas. The title of one of my paintings in this show “kiss the ground” references a quote by the surrealist Magritte ; “The kiss bestowed by the mind on the unconscious of nature and the imprint that it leaves”.
DOWNLOAD - Sue's Biography and Statement
J U S T I N E F OR M E N T E L L I
Having spent her formative years in the Caribbean, ReĢunion Island, and Morocco,
Justine Formentell’s work is deeply influenced by these transitory experiences and ever- changing environments. A sense of movement and flux permeates her pieces. Through undulating forms, transparency, and layered compositions, she explores the fluid boundaries of the self grounded in a body yet constantly interacting with the surrounding world.
Although figures are absent, her work is deeply concerned with how the external world permeates us on a profound level, connecting us all through an existential flow that moves through and around us. Using transparent, watery veils of paint, she blurs the distinction between foreground and background, examining the interplay between inner self and outer world. Whether drawing inspiration from the human body, the vegetal realm, or the mineral world, Justine sets up encounters between different forms, which at times merge and fuse into one another.
Embracing the unpredictability of highly diluted paints and revealing hidden layers through erasing and sanding, her process becomes a choreography of intention and discovery.
Justine Formentelli earned her MA from City & Guilds of London Art School in 2018. She has exhibited widely in the United States and Europe, with her work featured at the London Migration Museum in 2020. She was selected for Blue Shop Gallery: Works on Paper (2020), the ING Discerning Eye (2022), and the Royal Watercolour Society (2023). Her work is part of Soho House collections as well as private collections worldwide.
In her Navigation series, Justine Formentelli explores themes of change and transition, reflecting her perception of life as a continuous journey between physical and mental spaces. Having spent most of her life abroad, she draws on personal experiences where moments of clarity, hesitation, and unexpected shifts mirror the emotional process of navigating the unknown.
Painting allows her to map these inner and outer meanderings, searching for ways to find anchorage amid constant change—whether through subtle shifts or life-altering upheavals. Colour plays an intuitive role in her process, with calming hues and vibrant bursts evoking emotional states experienced along these journeys. Inspired by the fleeting atmospheres in Hiroshige and Hokusai’s prints, Formentelli investigates impermanence and the fragility of existence.
Her materials and techniques emphasise fluidity and varying tempos to evoke movement and transformation. Transparent, watery layers of paint dissolve boundaries between foreground and background, while textures—created through sanding, erasing, and reapplying paint—mimic natural processes of erosion and accumulation. This delicate balance between intention and chance becomes a choreography of discovery, echoing the ebb and flow of life’s ever-changing terrain.
F I H U N T E R
Fiona Hunter is a UK based artist specialising in sculpture. Educated as a graphic artist, she became an internationally awarded advertising art director and creative director, living and working in London, Amsterdam and Cape Town.
Advertising led her to work with many top photographers where she developed a love of photography. Trying her hand in the medium, she produced limited edition fine art gicleé prints and went on to set up a successful pop-up gallery exhibiting her work as well as other photographers.
Not completely satisfied with working in 2D, she began sculpting figurative and portrait sculptures in clay. She is presently focused on experimenting with the many ways she can cast her finished work. She is now producing sculptures in clay and bronze, as well as marble, iron, bronze and jesmonite resins.
R O B Y N L I T C H F I E L D
Drawing from archival photographs and personal documents relating to the early exploration and colonisation of New Zealand, Robyn Litchfield reimagines and examines the experience of those early forays into a hitherto unknown space. Her paintings envisage how sublime encounters with places; pristine and untouched might encourage contemplation and self-reflexivity.
Landscape becomes a ubiquitous template for exploring personal history, notions of cultural identity, alienation and a sense of belonging. Wilderness is used as the transitional liminal space, which can be seen as a place of disorientation and dissolution of order. Processes such as scraping into the paint, layering and erasure reference the destructive and constructive nature of being in a state of liminality. This space can offer an opportunity for reconfiguring subjectivity and a reimagining of possibilities.
An alluring luminosity projects through the monochrome images of dense forest. Elements extracted from the documents of primeval landscapes intrude into the space. For Litchfield they are haunting symbols of loss and longing; for past lives left behind, the dispossessed and the primeval forest. This layer of amorphous red shapes acts like a semiotic screen casting its shadow on the gaze. Through the uncanny layering and the juxtaposition of images, the viewer is encouraged to form their own associations and interpretations of the work whilst engaging with the otherness of landscape through paint.
M A N D Y P A Y N E
For Mandy Payne the important concerns within her paintings are materiality, surface textures and facture. She wants to work with materials that have a physical connection to the sites she depicts, namely concrete and spray paint (referencing the graffiti).
Her work suggests that ‘the built’ is in fact a form of nature. Mandy’s use of concrete, a material associated with the ‘made’, which main components actually derive from nature; sand and water, recognise the hidden roots that intertwine and connect us with the natural world. The natural environment where artist’s materials derive from, is in direct relation to the urbanisation of the natural environment.
Payne is inspired by urban landscape, issues of gentrification, inequality, social housing and the flux of city environments. She is interested in Brutalist architecture, modernism, notions of utopia/dystopia and finding beauty in the ordinary/overlooked.
"I wanted to document the estate in transition and also for the work to speak of the loss and displacement of the existing communities. I am interested in issues of gentrification, social housing and the flux of the urban environment. I am inspired by the spaces people inhabit, the traces they leave and the capacity of places to absorb memories and experiences. I am particularly drawn to locations that are in a transitional state, that are overlooked or derided."
Between 2012 and 2017, and then again during lockdown 2020 - 2022, her work focussed on Park Hill, the Grade II* listed Sheffield council estate and one of Britain’s largest examples of Brutalist architecture. The site is currently undergoing regeneration, with much of the estate converted into luxury flats, the remaining left boarded up and derelict.
It was the un-refurbished parts of Park Hill that she found most inspiring, where the memories and layers of the past were almost tangible. Payne wanted to document the estate in transition and also for the work to speak of the loss and displacement of the existing communities. Since 2017, as the regeneration of the estate has progressed, public access to Park Hill has become increasingly limited, thus she has been exploring similar locations undergoing gentrification in London, Manchester, Salford and Liverpool to inspire new work. In 2019, Mandy received an Arts Council Grant to investigate the North East of England to make new paintings and prints for a solo exhibition that she had at Huddersfield Art Gallery. However, during lockdown, in 2021, unable to travel far, Payne returned to Park Hill, making new paintings, documenting both the new build and also referring back to old photographs taken several years ago before regeneration got seriously underway.
As part of the process she casts concrete into small canvases to work on directly, employing spray paints and micro masking tapes to build up flat zones of colour and then oil painting for fine detail finishing. More recently working on large and lighter, custom made glass fibre reinforced panels to increase the scale of her work and also marble, referencing the perceived inequalities of rival building materials.
Mandy has widened her working practice and also investigated the same subject in print. In 2015 she was awarded a 2 year Fellowship to learn stone lithography at Leicester Print Workshop under the tutelage of expert lithographer Serena Smith.
N A N C Y Q I N
Nancy Qin is an Australian artist living and working in Sydney, she was fortunate enough to have a duo art education into both strategies of East and West. Studying the traditional arts at the Central Academy of Fine Arts imbued in her a sense of discipline, but it was glass she was in search of, so she journeyed back to Australia and finished her art education in Sydney College of the Arts.
Cast glass, different from blown or lamp-worked glass which many may be familiar with, has a more somber voice. Unlike its delicate and elegant siblings which work with an instantaneous, quick-handed craftsmanship; Cast glass is an exacting, time-consuming and labour intensive process with a very delayed gratification point. But its mysterious gravitas makes it worthwhile, the result is a beauty with a soft but profound song of its own.
Her current body work is based on pride and ego; Qin explores the tension between the image we think we project and the reality of our experiences donning the armour of pride. Something that is ornamental and fragile rather than strong and solid, something heavy and burdensome rather than functional and light. Qin uses glass to create a phantom of ego we wrap around ourselves for protection, letting its translucency show its lack of substance, and beauty to show how high we elevate its importance privileged to experience both, as they have allowed her to think both freely but with discipline in her life and art.
Qin also won the Vicki Torr Emerging Artist Prize 2020 and her work has been included into the National Glass Collection.
T I M S T E W A R D
“The sea does not reward those who are too anxious, too greedy, or too impatient. To dig for treasures shows not only impatience and greed, but lack of faith. Patience, patience, patience is what the sea teaches. Patience and faith.”
Anne Morrow Lindbergh | Gift from the Sea
Tim Steward is driven by an immutable desire to study, digest and record. Often using whatever mark-making device is to hand, Tim offers his viewer the opportunity to see the places he sees. It takes dedication to mentally transport oneself from space to place, but to share the experience with others – regardless of whether they’ve physically visited the location in question – is no mean feat.
He explores the beauty of ‘place’, through study of the physical, historical and spiritual elements which characterise it, and by recording it’s ever-changing nature over time. He now concentrates on the area around Tregardock, a National Trust owned area of North Cornwall. He has felt a connection with this area since early childhood, stating that he feels a sense of aliveness there and that it has given this work a ‘renewed sense of freedom’, allowing him to work much more from a place of ‘instinct’. Over the past few years, he has spent time becoming immersed in the landscape there, at times physically sitting in the mud, in addition to exploring the history and story of the place.
Steward says of his work, “There is something very humbling about being alone in such a vast landscape, and in truth everything in me can pull away when the weather is stormy, such is the intensity of the place. Still though I know I must feel the Earth beneath me and the elements around me. As I emerge out the other side this last few years, Tregardock has become a wonderful place of solace, despite its fierceness at times.” This deep connection to the wildness of the sculpted environment of North Cornwall which goes back to his childhood. The sharp angular shapes of the cliffs in the morning light a reminder of the dramatic black and white architectural views which dominated his early career. As with all his subject matters, his focus has taken him on a journey where through repetitive study he will see and feel things differently over time and record this evolving process; searching, seeking and expressing that which can pass in a moment.
Tim has honed an artistic voice filled with raw, energetic mark-making and a deep emotional connection to place. Tim’s choice of traditional mediums such as pastel, charcoal, pigment and oil, as well as found materials, such as charred wood, clay mud and sand, mirror his direct and instinctual way of working. Combining measured observation with working spontaneously at speed is at the heart of his painting and drawing technique.Inspired by the experimental focus of the likes of Boudin and Degas, Tim’s work is grounded in a classical approach. The stripped back and sometimes unconventional nature of his working methods, applying medium with his hands, throwing pigment onto paper, and applying found materials are part of a bold and visceral manner of working. He tirelessly surveys Tregardock Beach and the changing Atlantic coast; the beach itself only revealed at low tide.
Surveying is the operative word here.
For Tim initially studied Town and Country Planning at Cardiff University, before rerouting toward fine art. The two come together in the artist’s practice today, his knowledge and interest in urban design and building conservation feed into his drawing process, particularly in his Oxford series. The artist tells us his next challenge is to combine his Tregardock work with his love of capturing geometric details. Places of focus have included Radcliffe Square in Oxford, St Pauls and Westminster in London, the Colosseum in Rome, and more recently the Oxfordshire countryside and the North Cornwall coastline near Port Isaac.
“It was always in my mind that I would work outside – in nature. It was not however my imagining that this would be as an artist. Growing up in the Chilterns I developed a love of the outdoors. I remember clearly, digesting a book called Faith in the Countryside by the Archbishop's Commission on Rural Areas, which made a real impression on me. It read as a vision for sustainable communities of the future, built on some of the wonderful vestiges of the past.”
The shift in focus from old buildings to towering cliffs was a natural progression for Tim and one that has allowed much room for experimentation. “Integral to this phase of work has been learning – both of what I am drawing, the plants and their seasonality, and also the external forces that affect my work: the tides, the changing light, where the sun rises and sets, and the history of the place.”It’s through observations of everyday minutiae that Tim “naturally resonate[s] with the rhythms and preciousness of nature; small but important reminders of its vulnerability and its force …and the need above all to respect it…
“Sometimes I’ve not even got down to the beach, but found myself entangled in the hedgerows, studying the plants, or trying to capture the colour of the sky from our lodgings. These moments recorded, no matter how roughly, nearly always become something, and over time they form the very marrow of my work.”
Living and drawing in this part of Cornwall has only enhanced my love of the outdoors. Nature is so tangible here it becomes a part of you.” And you can most definitely feel this connection between artist and subject. Of all Tim’s work, his Tregardock series speaks to us the most, though we’re unable to grasp exactly why.
Of course, the artist’s process helps us to immerse ourselves in the series. The fact that he uses twigs, seawater, mud, clay, raw pigment… but there’s something more than that too, something intangible. Maybe it’s the artist’s need to get himself in the right – near meditative – mindset before embarking. Maybe it’s the constant changing of the weather’s mood, or the boundaries imposed by the tide. Maybe it’s the interaction of the elements with the work itself.
J U L I E W I G G
Julie Wigg's work is predominently process driven, yet influenced by mid 19th century landscape painters and the Abstract Expressionists, the work is a personal translation of the sensory experience of painting. Experimentations in colour, paint, spontaneity and the element of chance, tempered by constantly shifting dramas of light and movement.
Surface layers overlap, and earlier work often lies hidden beneath the one seen, their presence gradually uncovered by the sanding of the surface, as natural erosion occurs. Contour lines are scratched into the picture plane emulating the dynamic natural lines of the landscape, revealing trace elements, mapping the journey taken.
Looking upwards is important, the sky often mimicking the sea (a recurring motif), is often depicted, its treacherous beauty and its capricious nature playing an important role within her work. Often the definition between the vastness of wild open spaces, land and sea merge together, becoming one.
Julie’s paintings lie on the edge of abstraction, challenging the excepted perceptions, whilst fully embracing the idea of natural environment and landscape. They reflect the real and the imagined, the ideal, experience and memory of an ever changing environment.
Julie has an Hons Degree in Graphic Design, from Norwich School of Art, later returning to study a Fine Art Degree at De Montfort University.
She is currently working towards a MA in Art History and is the owner and founder of Darl-e and the Bear.
The gallery has been a developing project for the past 6 years and has been deeply immersive, challenging, thought provoking and wonderful experience.
As well as running the gallery she has curated all the shows/exhibitions within the gallery space and at outside venues. Working alongside the artists has brought a diverse and enriching experience which has helped inform and development her own art practice.
