ODE TO A NIGHTINGALE

David Cooper ‘Remains’
plaster, concrete, wood   .   140 x 34 x 27 cm


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David Cooper was born in Wakefield, West Yorkshire in 1972. He currently lives and works in Suffolk.

Cooper’s work deals with disorder, taking fragments of found, disregarded objects and exploring them inside-out, and outside-in, through a series of unpremeditated and intuitive processes in three dimensional form. The works inquire into a humanity that feels, fears and confronts restriction and control; a state of being often conducive to an abominable sense of desolation and fettered anxiety. These unknown (and unknowable) aspects of the human condition, driven by momentary absences of restraint, stricture and control are embodied. Broken happenings, motivated by instinct, assemblage techniques and random thoughts, naivety and energy are exploited to sculpt the identity of these unfathomable aspects of human experience. His intriguing and expressive portraits, are perhaps deliberately destined to remain curious and incomplete.

Cooper studied fashion at John Moores University followed by an MA in Fashion Design at Central Saint Martins where he went on to become lead designer and head of menswear at Alexander McQueen. More recently Cooper attended Fine Art summer school at the Slade School of Fine Art in 2008. Works have been exhibited extensively in the UK including The Jerwood Drawing Prize in 2014 and most recently as part of Anima Mundi’s ‘Protected by Alarms’.

Paul Benney ‘Migration’
oil and resin on panel   .   59 x 61 cm


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Paul Benney is a British artist born in London, England in 1959. He currently lives and works from studios in London and Suffolk

Benney rose to international prominence as a member of the Soho and East Village Neo-Expressionist group, whilst living and working in New York City in the 1980s where he worked and exhibited alongside peers Marylyn Minter, Jean-Michel Basquiat and David Wojnarovicz among the many other others who made up the exploding 80s NY art scene. Despite living and working in this extraordinary environment Benney’s painting maintained a uniquely English sensibility.

Paul Benney is a multi-disciplined artist whose oeuvre moves beyond clear and definitive categorization although his work could be seen to continue the strong tradition of ‘British Mysticism’ championed by the likes of Samuel Palmer and William Blake.

Clearly, the primary mode of expression is paint, which he handles with profound technical dexterity, but to add to this he is also a goldsmith (skills learned from his father, the celebrated goldsmith Gerald Benney), a sculptor, film maker, a musician and also a perfumer, all of which he is able to carry out with notable esoteric ability and accomplishment. He is a polymath. Marcus Aurelius once stated that: “Nothing has such power to broaden the mind as the ability to investigate systematically and truly all that comes under thy observation in life.” But the tangibility of technique is only one face; the artist must also have a passion to use the senses to delve into the unsolved. 

For the past thirty years Paul Benney has worked both in the United States and United Kingdom. His paintings are notably represented in a plethora of public collections including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, The Brooklyn Museum, The National Gallery of Australia and The National Portrait Gallery in London, The Royal Collection and The Eli Broad Foundation. He has exhibited in eight BP Portrait Award Exhibitions and twice won the BP Visitors’ Choice Award. Benney's portrait subjects have included HM Queen Elizabeth II, Sir Mick Jagger, John Paul Getty III, 7th Marquess of Bath, The State Portrait for Israel, Lord Rothschild, as well as Ben Barnes for the portrait in the feature film ‘A Portrait of Dorian Grey’ in 2008. Benney was invited to be resident artist at Somerset House in 2010. During his five year residency he held the exhibition ‘Night Paintings’ in 2012 which explored themes that deal more with the subconscious and metaphysical world and drew over 15,000 visitors. In 2017 his epic painting and holosonic sound installation ‘Speaking in Tongues’ was a prominent feature of the Venice Biennale, located at Chiesa San Gallo, just off St Marks’s Square. The paintings from ‘Speaking In Tongues’ were subsequently purchased by a significant US art foundation based in California for permanent exhibition. Paintings are held in multiple collections worldwide.

Trevor Bell ’Tsu’
mixed media on panel   .   120 x 120 x 12 cm


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Trevor Bell was a British artist, born in Leeds, England in 1930. He passed away in 2017 at his home in west Cornwall.

Bell's creative interest focussed primarily, on painting’s power to evoke sensation, which for him superseded any illusionistic properties that it might have. Ambitious in scale and dynamic in form, the range of work is diverse, Bell’s over is a celebration of mutable energy, elemental forces and a quest for contemplative stillness.He achieved significant critical acclaim and recognition for his direct, abstract forms which emphatically represent the conflicting or harmonious physicality found in the natural world to the spiritual concerns which connect all that surrounds us from the micro to the macro.

Bell was as an important figure within the St Ives post war modernist movement, which achieved international acclaim.

He also spent a significant part of his career in the USA, where he became head of art at Tallahassee State University, a role that he approached with zeal alongside the continued production of his expansive paintings and public artworks for which he became known. In 2007 Tate St Ives presented a ‘Beyond Materiality' a solo exhibition of contemporary work shown alongside key works drawn from five decades of painting. Chris Stephens (then head of displays at Tate Britain) said "Bell’s art is, in the loosest sense, spiritual. It evokes, or reflects, an idea of some abstract force that exceeds material reality... The dangers and losses of the modern world would be compensated through the rediscovery of natural order and process, and a renewed sense of individual identity would be established through the exploration of forces larger than ourselves. Bell’s work, one might say, has always derived in one way or another from this new sublime."

In 1955 he was encouraged by a friend and peer, Terry Frost, to travel to St Ives where he would find a place that he could focus on his painting amongst the town’s expanding artistic community. There he joined Ben Nicholson, Peter Lanyon, Barbara Hepworth and Patrick Heron amongst others. Bell’s career was quick to climb. Patrick Heron described Bell as “The best non-figurative painter under 30”. The following year Bell was awarded the honour of the prize for painting at the Paris Biennale. During this year Bell visited the ‘Museum of the Man’ which was to have a profound affect on him. Bells says of this encounter “To see the power of the masks and the actual presence of things, it made me realise that I wanted the work to have an equivalent that would be ‘it’ rather than the ‘illusion of it’, to be the ‘God’ rather than an 'illusion of a God’”. Bell also described an early meeting with Zen monk and teacher Snhunryu Suzuki at the house of Bernard Leach as particularly pivotal. Bell credits Suzuki with describing what he was “feeling" he had to do in painting, these lessons remained with him all his life. Bell stayed in St. Ives for five years constantly developing his technique and painting language, but in 1960 left St Ives and returned to Leeds College of Art as a Gregory Fellow (the youngest to date). It was here the he began to develop his shaped works which began to set him apart from other abstract artists of his generation. John Elderfield (head curator of MOMA New York) said "Bell was making paintings whose interior shapes referred to landscape - but to the forces as much as to the forms of landscape; and it was this concern for what is best described as dynamics which led him naturally into an investigation of the mechanisms of painting itself.” During the 1960s Bell showed work in major exhibitions in the UK and USA and during this time his work was first bought for the Tate collection. Bells idiosyncratic work continued to develop. In 1970, Patrick Heron stated; “One of the most important painters working anywhere today is Trevor Bell... As far as I am concerned [Bell’s paintings] are far and away the most original and successful shaped canvas paintings - which remain paintings - to have been produced anywhere. But the task of justifying this judgment and of explaining, even to myself, the reasons for their very great power and beauty is daunting in the extreme, because so much about their construction, their literal appearance and colour, is unique and therefore outside existing terms of formal comparison and analysis.” In 1972, while on a visit to Florida State University, Bell witnessed at first hand the night-time launch of the Apollo 17 space mission at Cape Canaveral. It was a spectacle that captured and inspired Bell, and became a captivating source for a number of works which followed. These works were included in his solo exhibition at London's Whitechapel Gallery in 1973, having just taken part in a major exhibition at the Corcoran Gallery in Washington DC. Bell located to the USA in 1975 and in 1976 after being appointed by Florida State University to become Professor for Master painting. Bell viewed his time in Tallahassee fondly, here with the provision of a warehouse sized studio and time to really develop his painting he continued to produce ambitious works. Alongside gallery exhibitions, he worked on public art commissions including 'Florida Queen' for the passenger terminal at Orlando airport made in 1981. Bell was included in the 1983 Tate Gallery ‘St Ives 1939-64’ exhibition and in the inaugural Tate St Ives exhibition when it opened in 1993. When he retired from Florida State University in 1996 he returned to Cornwall which had remained a spiritual home. He converted a farmhouse in to large scale studio’s to continue to make work with notable ambition. Bell was made an honoury academician of the Royal West of England Academy, an Honoury Fellow of Falmouth University and Professor Emeritus as Florida State in recognition of his achievements. Support in the US continued with Florida State University ensuring that Bell’s key American works remained prominent. A monograph published by Sanson & Company in 2009 written by Elizabeth Knowles and Chris Stephens communicated the huge breadth of Bell’s work on both sides of the Atlantic. 14 works were acquired by The Tate in 2014 and an acquisition was made in 2015 by the Perez Art Museum in Florida the most recent major acquisitions in a roster that includes a multitude of important public collections here and abroad. His final body of work ‘Beyond the Edge’ made at the age of 85 was a tour de force of purity, balance and the sublime - which encapsulated his philosophical aims for ‘nothing extra’ to intrude in the work. Bell would sum up his ability to encapsulate and distil natures physical and metaphysical complexity with a graceful rawness and often profound simplicity with typical humility by stating that "He was just in the middle”. Most recently Bell collaborated with choreographer Rodger Belman in the states in an exhibition incorporating painting and dance and in the final months of his life he was focussing on a future public solo exhibition 'Trans-Form’, a celebration of key recent and older works, their energies transformed into sound and contemporary dance. Trevor Bell’s paintings are represented by Anima Mundi.

Si On ‘Harlem Gold’
mixed media on canvas   .   244 x 168 cm


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Si On (formerly Hyon Gyon) was born in 1979 in Dangjin, South Korea, she currently lives and works in Krakow, Poland.

Taking her cue from the contrast between personal investigation, pop culture and traditional Korean Shamanism, Si On has employed a diverse range of media to create works dealing with the social challenges of today including sociocultural identity, grief, anger and sexual politics. Si On’s experience of ritual allows her to tap into the depths of her own subconscious, to purge her feelings of sorrow and rage by transforming them into creative energy in the hope of freeing herself of suppressed anguish. Through this cathartic process, whereby the artist energetically acts out the awful hallucinations and terror-stricken visions that haunt her psyche, she transcends these agonising emotions and translates them into her art works. She believes that art has the power to ignite negative emotions from within and transform them, similar in its effect to a cleansing that restores contentment and a sense of well-being.

Si On achieved a BA in Western Painting from Mokwon University in South Korea, and in 2006 moved to Japan to pursue an MA and a PhD in Painting at Kyoto City University of Arts. Her career began during her time as a student in Japan and developed further when she moved to New York in 2013. She has received several fellowships and awards, including the Asao Kato International Scholarship, 2006–2008, the Kyoto Cultural Award, 2014, and the Tokyo Wonder Wall Competition Prize in 2014. She has shown in group exhibitions in numerous prestigious institutions, such as: Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo, Japan, 2010; Asian Art Museum, San Francisco, USA, 2012; Brooklyn Museum, 2015, and Batu Museum, 2017, in New York, USA; Carnegie Art Museum, Pittsburgh, USA, 2016; and Kyoto Art Center, Japan, 2017. She has also had solo exhibitions at the Kyoto Art Center, Japan, 2011; HAPS, Kyoto, Japan, 2013; Pioneer Works and Chashama in New York, both 2015; Shin Gallery, New York, USA, several shows between 2013 and 2017; and at Ben Brown Fine Arts, Hong Kong, 2017. Works are held in, among others, the permanent collections of: Brooklyn Museum, NY, and the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, in the USA; Kyoto City University of Arts, Kyoto Municipal Museum of Art, Kyoto Bank, and the Takahashi Collection in Japan.

Phoebe Cummings 'Punctuation’
clay, ink, wire . 14 x 20 x 12 cm 


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Phoebe Cummings is a British artist born in Walsall, England in 1981. She currently resides in Stoke-on-Trent. 

Cummings sculptural work builds on an ongoing interest in time and nature and how this has been represented and stylised through design. She works predominantly using unfired clay to make poetic and performative sculptures and installations that emphasize materiality, fragility, time, creation and decay.Cummings' impressive interventions are constructed directly on site, allowing an instinctive development of tensions between object and location. In her current work, Cummings' practice has developed to exist beyond the duration of the exhibition. Cummings questions what we will carry forward into the future by producing intricate, hand made and exquisitely delicate sculptures based on ancient plants and primitive ritual, imbued with a sense of magic and mysticism.

Drawing together elements of English Paganism as well as the aesthetic excess of Baroque and Rococo design, the resultant objects could be considered as dystopian ornaments of a future anthropology. 

Phoebe Cummings studied ceramics at Brighton University in 2002 before completing an MA in ceramics and glass at the Royal College of Art in 2005. She has undertaken a number of artist residencies in the UK, USA and Greenland, including a six month residency at the Victoria & Albert Museum in 2010. In 2017 she won first place at the inaugural Woman’s Hour Craft Prize with work exhibited at the V&A Museum, before touring to venues around the UK. Cummings was selected as the winner of the British Ceramics Biennial Award in 2011 and awarded a ceramics fellowship at London’s Camden Arts Centre (2012–13). ‘Supernatural’ was her first solo exhibition at Anima-Mundi. In addition, Cummings’ work has been featured in numerous group exhibitions, including '60|40 Starting Point Series’ at Siobhan Davies Studios, London, 'Formed Thoughts' at Jerwood Space, London; and 'Swept Away: Dust, Ashes, and Dirt in Contemporary Art and Design' at the Museum of Arts and Design, New York. In 2013, she had a solo show at the University of Hawaii Art Gallery in Honolulu and The exchange in Penzance.

Richard Nott 'Revenant’
mixed media on board . 60 x 60 cm 


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Richard Nott is a British artist born in 1963 in Cornwall. He currently lives and works in west Cornwall. 

Richard Nott’s paintings are unique. There are no oil or acrylic paints in his studio, he works with industrial materials, bitumen, emulsions and varnishes, building them up layer upon layer, often over intimately drawn or gouged grids, lines or marks, into a textural palimpsest, before courageously scraping or burning them back to reveal what lies underneath.Viewing Richard Nott’s artwork is witnessing a protracted collision of creative and destructive processes. An evolution of matter, exposed, concealed, exposed, concealed, continuously. His paintings become the consequence of years spent where Nott’s history merges with the history of the elements used. He has little interest in illusionistic ‘texture’, the work must be its own entity, have its own story and be its own statement.

His objective is to create an organic object that evolves like a living thing with truth and imperfection. His process of working allows for a contemplation of a cycle of existence to become imbued in to the work. Not a beginning with an end but a journey where genesis leads to dissolution, and on once again to genesis. Something eternal akin to alchemy. 

Richard Nott gained his Fine Art degree at Lancashire Polytechnic and his MA in fine art at Reading University. In 1985 he worked as an assistant to Andy Goldsworthy on site-specific sculptures in the Lake District. He was gallery assistant at the Royal Academy from 1986-7 and at Oldham Art Gallery from 1991-2. He won the South West Arts Visual Arts and Photography Award in 1994. He gained a residency at the 12th International Weeks of Painting in Slovenia. Exhibitions have been extensive and international notable included numerous solo exhibitions at Anima-Mundi over a long and fruitful working relationship, ‘Art Now Cornwall’ at the Tate St Ives and Chashama, Avenue of the America’s, NYC. Richard Nott is represented by Anima Mundi.

Jim Carter 'I Run the Hollow Wind'
wood, blood, soil, iron, twigs, jackdaw feathers . 90 x 56 cm 


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The headless body of an animal reaches towards the morning light on the winter solstice. Though in traditional thought the aim of separation was to free the mind from the influence of the body, here the "turbulent sphere of the body" is regarded as superior, and humankind's dissociation from the animal a grief and a violation. Existing between the supernatural and the material, the body symbolises nature and its embodied attributes of fertility and rebirth. In both worlds the animal has been shamanically dismembered and re-formed. The head is elsewhere, imagined buried (as the body was, prior to disinterment) at an important point on a tribal boundary or spiritual frontier. In this work, the wounded animal suggests a regeneration; it is not deprived of life but is, in exile and death, master of its fate and talisman for survival of the living. Marked on its hand with a symbol of the sun, and, on its foot, the full moon, in crossed arms it rebels through the mystery of cyclic transformation.

Jim Carter tells animal stories through words and sculpture. More often than not, works are about English wildlife and a sense of its power and vulnerability in relation to humankind. Uneasy or tragic, irrational or obscure, these stories are linked to a real world of suffering and transcendence: making sculpture from organic materials as a means of advocacy, atonement or commemoration; shifting to the written word as a way to enter emotional and numinous spaces of memory and dream. Carter’s aim is to be honest in negotiating the complex experiences that arise in relation to land and animal life: "there is anger, fear, sorrow, death, but also fertility, transformation and renewal, with the central theme being the intimate relationship between land and the human psyche."

Jim Carter received an MA with distinction in Art and Environment from Falmouth University. A member of the Newlyn Society of Artists, his work has appeared in About Place Journal, Unpsychology and Earthlines magazine.

Henry Hussey ‘Change’
duel screen video (10.55) . click here to watch film


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Henry Hussey is a British artist born in London in 1990 where he still resides. “I keep making the same mistakes” - is the pivotal line in ‘Change’, this two-channel, semi-autobiographical short film. Hussey is a man animated and sustained by an almost megalomaniacal conviction of the universal nature of his own personal struggle. Is humanity doomed to repeat its mistakes? He invites us to take that possibility seriously by looking at the world through the lens of ‘archetypes’ – the Jungian hypothesis that all humans share a collective unconscious whose building blocks can only be inferred indirectly from our stories, art, myths, religions, and dreams. It is never totally clear whether, ultimately, Hussey is an optimist or a pessimist. On the one hand, his wading through the detritus of half-remembered myths, inherited legends and fragments of faded grandeur seems to be a suggestion that Enlightenment is, at best, a work in progress. Jung said “Man’s task is…to become conscious of the contents that press upward from the unconscious. […] As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being.” And that is also the thing about mistakes – if you throw them on the fire they’ll generate light for you.

Hussey's multimedia artworks, shifting from textile, glass, bronze, monoprint and video, reveal a deep concern with control and chaos and the sweet spot in between these two distinctive states. His works are typically emotionally raw, created primarily through paradoxically laboured and intricate mediums. He explores both personal, national and universal identity, often in response to aggravating relationships and events. The dramatic and intense impression created by his works is heightened by a vibrant and bold colour palette, which is used to both reinforce its narrative as well as underline the labour-intensive aspect of his practice. The resultant artworks have a commanding presence, both reverential and awe-inspiring. Hussey studied Textiles at Chelsea College of Art before completing an MA in Textiles at the Royal College of Art. His work is widely respected and has been exhibited in notable exhibitions including The Textiel Biennale 2017 at Museum Rijswijk in the Hague, a solo presentation at Art Central in Hong Kong, the Bloomberg New Contemporaries in 2014 at the Institute of Contemporary Art in London, the Royal Academy London and Volta New York and the Young Talent Contemporary Prize at the Ingram Collection in 2016. Hussey has participated in residencies at La Vallonea, Tuscany, Italy in 2018 and will participate in a residency at Palazzo Monti, Milan in 2020. His work is held in collections worldwide including Simmons & Simmons, Hogan Lovells, The Groucho Club and Soho House.

Andrew Litten ‘Head of a Dying Man’
oil on canvas   .   90 x 90 cm 


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Andrew Litten is a British artist, born in Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire in 1970. He currently works from his studio in Fowey, Cornwall. 

His dynamic and gestural figurative paintings express a strong interest in the universal complexity of everyday existence. Dealing with humanistic themes such as love, sensuality, fear, anger, loss, nostalgia, mundanity, personal growth and perceived identity normality or disturbance. Paintings are created with an unguarded, empathetic attitude, like so many expressionistic artists, a rawness of approach combined with an often viscous application of paint is also key to the extreme experience felt from the work. Gesture and nuance inspire extreme emotive reading, perhaps subversive, tender, passionate, ambivalent, malevolent or compassionate, our response becomes one of allure or repulsion.

Litten is a self-taught artist leaving art college as a teenager having found it to be too restrictive to his aspired method of working. For a decade he created mostly small-scale works using humble domestic or found materials (including envelopes and assembled furniture parts). The work made at this time deliberately challenged ideas of art elitism and art as commodity. He then moved to Cornwall in 2001 and chose to begin exhibiting. Early success came when his work was included in an exhibition titled ‘Nudes’ in New York City, (along with Jacob Epstein and Pierre-Auguste Renoir), where his work was highlighted and reviewed by the New York Times. Shortly after he had four consecutive solo exhibitions each of which included publications at Goldifsh Fine Arts in Penzance, Cornwall. Other notable exhibitions included ‘Move’ at Vyner Street, London, during Frieze Art Week 2007, where his work ‘Dog Breeder’, created as a twisted and emphatic anti-art statement, was exhibited. He was also included in ‘No Soul For Sale’ at Tate Modern Turbine Hall, London in 2010. In 2012 he held a major solo exhibition at Millennium in St Ives, Cornwall and that year was given a guest solo exhibition at L13 Light Industrial Workshop, London. He has also held large-scale solo exhibitions at Spike Island and Motorcade FlashParade in Bristol. Ordinary Bodies, Ordinary Bones was conceived with support from The Arts Council, UK and will be exhibited at Anima Mundi in 2018. Works have been included in numerous international curated mixed exhibitions in Berlin, Dublin, Siena, Milwaukee and New York City and in Venice during the 54th Biennale. Most recently paintings have been exhibited in four major museums in China. Andrew Litten paintings feature in numerous international private and public collections. He is represented by Anima Mundi.

Simon Hitchens ‘A Certain Reciprocity 1 & 2’
stone, wax, pigment   .   22 x 38 x 17 cm / 14 x 40 x 17 cm


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Simon Hitchens work explores the interconnectedness between the human and the non-human, as a means to learning about Mankind’s relationship with impermanence. The material backbone of his work is rock in its raw and natural state. This is not carved and polished but plucked from the rock face or quarry floor. He remains acutely aware of the historical significance that stone has as the prime material to make sculpture, and as a sculptor is challenged to make art that contributes to this debate. As a climber he maintains an intimate relationship with rock, and is acutely aware that geologically it is the very material that supports us upon the planet. In the age of the Anthropogenic it seems pertinent to question how we comprehend the geological and human worlds as united, interconnected even. Hitchens believes there is increasingly a disconnect between these two worlds which is harmful not only to the planet but also our psyche. Consequently, rock is the conceptual focus of his work and typically the material backbone within it. His work questions differences between animate and inanimate, more specifically rock and flesh, mountain and body; exploring themes of transience and transcendence. He makes post-human hybrid forms that negotiate a numinous space somewhere between rock and flesh: a line of inquiry into the nature of being.

Simon Hitchens graduated in Fine Art from the University of the West of England in 1990 and his work has been exhibited around the world since then. He frequently exhibits in solo and group exhibitions, undertaking private commissions and numerous large-scale public commissions. He was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Sculptors in 1998, is an RWA Academician and is the fourth generation of artist in his family.

Kristoffer Axén 'Pastime' & 'Descent' 
oil on canvas   .   70 x 50 cm / 80 x 60 cm


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Kristoffer Axén was born 1984 in Stockholm, Sweden where his still resides. His atmospheric paintings and works on paper are often self-biographical as a means of tapping into the wider human condition. Works revolve around themes including the utopia of childhood, the temporary, dreamlike, quality of reality and the unconscious search for something oblique or unspecified. A sense of nostalgia is often tinged with an overarching feeling of the melancholy of transience. 

Inspired by cinematic imagery, anonymous photographs from the internet and childhood snapshots, Axén’s paintings and drawings are often bordering the dreamstate and the inner world. While contemporary and historic references include Michael Borremans, Mamma Andersson, Vilhelm Hammershoi and Richard Diebenkorn, his use of textured mechanical pencil for the drawings and the juxtaposed realism with the simplified blocks in his paintings are uniquely his own.  

Axén is a self-taught painter, who studied fine-art photography at the International Center of Photography in New York between 2008-2009, a city in which he lived and worked in until 2013. Axén’s work have been exhibited internationally in solo shows in New York, Copenhagen, Stockholm and in numerous group shows around the world, notably at Liljevalchs Spring Show in Stockholm, at Aperture Gallery in New York and at Musée de l'Elysée in Lausanne, Switzerland. Axén, is part of many private and public collections such as the ICP collection, Michaelis School of Fine Arts and MONA and he has been published in articles and selections from magazines such as Zoom Magazine, The New York Times and Vogue Italia.

Kate Clark 'Gallant’
mixed media sculpture   .  170 x 58 x 137 cm


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Kate Clark lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. Her sculptures invite the viewer to experience an instinctive and primal reaction that encourages further examination of our humanity. Stitched over a hand-sculpted human face, the material quality of the animal hide brings an authenticity to the final sculpture. We identify as ‘separate from’ animals while at the same time we arguably identify with animals more than anything else on earth. Recognising these contradictions, her fusion of human and animal suggests that our human condition is fully realised only when we acknowledge our current state and our natural instincts.She emphasises the characteristics that differentiate us within the animal kingdom, and, importantly, the ones that unite us. This sculptural fusion creates a fiction that suggests that our humanity is only fully realised when we acknowledge our current programming but also our natural instincts.

Clark attended Cornell University for her BFA and Cranbrook Academy of Art for her MFA and has been awarded fellowships from the Jentel Artists Residency in Wyoming, The Fine Arts Work Center Residency in Provincetown, MA., and the Marie Walsh Sharpe Studio Program in New York. Clark was nominated for a USA Fellowship, a Louis Comfort Tiffany Award and an American Academy of Arts and Letters award. Clark was awarded a grant from The Virginia Groot Foundation in 2013 and a New York Foundation For the Arts (NYFA) Fellowship Award in 2014. Clark has exhibited in solo museum exhibitions at the Mobile Museum of Art, The Newcomb Art Museum and the Hilliard Museum and in group museum exhibitions at the Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, The Islip Art Museum, and The Bellevue Arts Museum, MOFA: Florida State University, Cranbrook Art Museum, Frist Center for the Visual Arts, The Winnepeg Art Gallery, the Glenbow Museum, the Musée de la Halle Saint Pierre, Paris, The Art Gallery at Cleveland State University, the Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art, the Nevada Museum of Art, the David Winton Bell Gallery at Brown University, the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, the Biggs Museum of American Art, the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, and the J. Paul Getty Museum. Her work is collected internationally and is in public collections such as the JP Morgan Chase Art Collection, the 21c Collection, the David Roberts Art Foundation in London, and the C-Collection in Switzerland. Clark’s sculptures have been featured in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, New York Magazine, Art21:Blog, The Village Voice, PAPERmag, The Atlantic, Hyperallergic, NYArts, Huffington Post, Hi Fructose, the BBC World News Brazil, Hey! Magazine, Time Out, ID Paris, Cool Hunting, Wallpaper, Creators Project/VICE, Sculpture Review and many other publications. In addition she was filmed by National Geographic in her studio over a 2 month period for a short documentary about her work.

Eeva Peura 'Nymphs (Carol Rama Lake)’
oil on canvas   .   120 x 150 cm 


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Eeva Peura was born in Orimattila, Finland in 1982, she currently lives and works in Helsinki. With painting as her primary working method she discusses topics both large and small. The dissolution of different worlds coalescing into each other is strongly present in the work. Peura’s pieces often have an ironic and tragic character to them while at the same time possessing a great warmth and depth. Each piece is an artefact that stands as testament of a more comprehensive narrative. Peura's works seem to be united by an almost anecdotal narrative, which is by definition a little story always contains something touching. An anecdote is always a promise of a bigger or longer story that may be told next time. The point is that the meaning or mind of a story is never fully revealed, but questions and open possibilities always remain in the viewer’s mind. When you look at the works of Eve Peura, it is easy to understand how works of art can move us in time, place, and reality somewhere else we would never otherwise end up with. The artist guides us to each other’s soluble realities and shows hand-to-hand how painting is slow, to be felt, and therefore capable of being so very moving. Her studies took her from the Orivesi Art School, to  the Akademie Výtvarných Umeni, in Prague, the School of Fine Art Kankaanpää and the Finnish Academy of Fine Arts, Helsinki.

Her work has been exhibited throughout Finland, notably Kerava Art Museum, Pirkanpohja Art Centre, Pori Art Museum,  Mänttä Art Festival, Lahti Art Museum, and the Finnish Academy of Fine Arts Gallery. She has attended residences including Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris, France,  SÌM Residency, Reykjavik, Iceland, The Saari Residence, Kone Foundation, Saint Petersburg, The Finnish Artists’ Studio Foundation, Utö, Finland, KUVYO Artist Residency, Berliini, Finnish Academy of Fine Arts. Works are held in The Finnish State Art Collection, Helsinki City Art Museum and The Finnish Art Association alongside many private collections.

Andrew Hardwick 'Yellow Valley' 
mixed media on board   .    61 x 81 cm  


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Andrew Hardwick is a British artist born in Bristol, England in 1961 where he still resides. His often large scale, sedimentary paintings display his captivation with wilderness zones; both natural and man-made. Playing with and subverting traditional notions of romantic landscape painting and the sublime. The paintings often depict edge-land zones around big industrial conurbations or ports, such as large-scale car storage compounds, redundant factories and polluted waste lands. Other works draw inspiration from the more typically idyllic locations such as Dartmoor and Bodmin Moor. However, these landscapes are also filled with reminders of human interference. Roads cris-cross the moor in deeply scratched lines, a narrow road is etched into an otherwise massive moorland triptych, likewise a real car radiator sits in the surface of a painting’s as if decaying and buried by the earth.

His medium of working is also atypical, paintings are heavily layered with different types of paint (often sourced from recycling centre), plaster, plastics, soils, pigments, roofing felt, hay and other unconventional materials. To this rich surface relevant artefacts are often added, creating reminders or triggering memories intrinsic to a particular landscape. The concept of layering in the landscape arrived partly a result of the artist’s childhood, during which his family’s farm was first sliced in half by the M5 motorway and then again by the Royal Portbury Dock. The land once filled with sheep has become a pure edge-land wilderness with detritus of the developments now filling the land. Hardwick’s entire oeuvre makes reference to concepts of change, memory, history and emotion. Ever redolent is the notion that we are but another layer in time.

Andrew Hardwick achieved an MA in Fine Art at the University of Wales. He is an elected Academician at the Royal West of England Academy. He has featured in four solo exhibitions at Anima Mundi. Works have been exhibited extensively including numerous public shows and have been collected worldwide.

Jamie Mills 'Essence of a Word I, II, III'
archival pigment print on 308gsm Hanemuhle photo rag    .   35 x 29 cm each (triptych)


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Jamie Mills lives and work in West Cornwall. His practice is underpinned by investigation surrounding the dissemination of gesture between materiality and environments – referencing both internal and external landscapes. These concerns are reinforced by an interdisciplinary approach to working and are made manifest through the renderings of sounds or materials often sourced or retrieved via immersion into nature or borderlands, and with particular reference to his aural works, articulated and manipulated through unorthodox instrumental preparations and the incorporation and processing of field recordings. The term ‘gestalt’ refers to a concept within psychotherapeutic fields, inferring that the nature of a whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Max Wertheimer wrote on the nature of the theory – “there are wholes, the behaviour of which is not determined by that of their individual elements, but where the part-processes are themselves determined by the intrinsic nature of the whole.” Mills’ employment of the mediums of photography, sound and mark-making can be read in this sense whereby a reality is constructed not by the sole surface representation of any individual element alone, but instead there is a sense that the artists reality is presented through the relationships and the spaces between elements. In other terms, it is work that requires both on one hand a stepping away from, and on the other an immersion into, in order to extract an empathetic understanding of the essence of the work that presides from both a conscious and subconscious framework of mind. Universally inherent within his process of rendering, there is a conscious dialogue between, on one hand material intent (or ‘essence’) and on the other, control, (or the relinquishing of control), so as to make work that negotiates thresholds and occupies at times a liminal status. In this sense Mills’ “intuitively composed” sound works, and his images or assemblages become markers to a series of internal journeys or rituals informed by an often poetic dialogue between material, form and environment.

Alastair Mackie 'Assemblage (Oak)'
oak burr veneer, beech substrate   .   42 x 75 x 8 cm


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Alastair Mackie was born in North Cornwall in 1977 where he still resides. Mackie’s oeuvre reconciles the formal with the conceptual, in a generous body of works that challenges the deep-rooted separation between animal and human, and exposes the clichés still hampering our understanding of man’s relationship to the natural world.

​Mackie studied at Camberwell College of Art (1997) and City and Guilds London School (2000). He has exhibited extensively in the UK and internationally, notably including exhibitions at the David Roberts Art Foundation, London, the Venice Biennale, the Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum, Braunschweig, Kunstmuseum Bochum, Museum Kunst der Westküste, Alkersum, Ambras Castle, Innsbruck, Weserburg Museum of Modern Art, Weserburg, The Wallace Collection, London, the Saatchi Gallery, London, the Torrance Art Museum, Los Angeles,  the Newlyn Art Gallery, Cornwall, The Eden Project, Cornwall, the Busan Museum of Modern Art, Kunsthalle Krems, Austria, Museum of Arts and Design, New York, the Gervasuti Foundation, Venice, the Ethnographic Museum, Dubrovnik and the Reykjavik Art Museum, Reykjavik. He has worked on a number of public commissions including Mimetes Anon, commissioned by the Contemporary Art Society for the Economist Plaza in St. James’, London in 2009. His work is held in collections including: The Olbricht Collection, Berlin, the Salsali Private Museum, Dubai, the Saatchi Collection, London, and the Wellcome Collection, London.

Rebecca Harper 'Repetition Rooted in the Earlier Grief'
acrylic on unprimed canvas   .   198 x 140 cm


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Rebecca Harper was born in London in 1989 where she still currently lives and works. Her often large-scale paintings, underpinned by intense drawing, demonstrate a mode of reconstructing visual appearances; events, beliefs, dreams, memory and mediated imagery, whereby seamless, sometimes fictional fragmentations are rearranged and presented as plausible happenings. The diasporic condition presents itself in her paintings as an unfolding allegoric commentary on its life-source. The works are a contemplation of transience, a theatre in which human instinct compassionately addresses ideas of settlement, (the fixed image) a reaction to one’s transient restlessness and displacement and a complex dispersion of un-at-homeness and groundlessness. Her often large scale works allow for ‘paintings' potential to play voyeur, allowing distance enough to play the narrator without a need for the images to be fixed, settled or stable. The motives of her works are intended to be contradictory, at once both particular and general, restrained and ornate, whole and fragmented, detectable and imperceptible, relatable and distant, reflecting the complex duality of the human condition. 

Harper studied at UWE Bristol 2008-2011, The Royal Drawing School 2012-2014 and Turps Art School 2016-2018, since 2014 having taught through the Royal Drawing School at various institutions; The Saatchi Gallery, The V&A Museum of Childhood, Cass Arts, Drawing School Central/Selfridges, The Southbank centre, The National Gallery; She was awarded The Michael Moritz residency Tuscany and The Modi Institute of Fine Art, India 2014. Harper is represented in both public and private collections and has exhibited in numerous group shows including Christies London and New York and most recently been included in Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2018. She has also exhibited at ‘Artist of the Day’ at Flowers Gallery 2018, Supersimetrica Art Fair, The PieFactory/Turner Contemporary - Turner show in Margate and The Turps Gallery London. She is currently Artist in Residence for the Ryder Project at A.P.T in Deptford 2018-1 and recently won the ACS (Artists Collecting Society) Studio Prize 2018. Rebecca Harper is represented by Anima Mundi.

Tim Shaw ‘Raven’
bronze (ed 8)   .   30 x 48 cm


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Tim Shaw is a British artist, born in Belfast in 1964. He currently lives in Cornwall. His sculpture and installation is often dualistic, incorporating current affairs, societal complexity and human conflict with ancient, mythical, metaphysical and primal concerns. Shaw’s powerful oeuvre connects these elements to create wider, timeless portraits of humanity. Shaw is an artist schooled in the traditions of heavy metal casting and academic modelling, however his approach to materials and subjects is totally contemporary. He often creates environments which include sound, light and FX. The tension between tradition and the new, nowness and the ancient, between solidity and breakdown, is an organic part of his worldview, whether he’s looking at the atrocities of Abu Ghraib or the transgression or enlightenment of primitive ritual.

He was elected an Academician at The Royal Academy in 2013 and made a Fellow of The Royal British Society of Sculptors and a Fellow of Falmouth University the same year. Shaw has had a number of significant solo shows throughout the UK, Ireland and internationally. Most recently the major public solo exhibitions ‘What Remains’ and ‘Something is Not Quite Right’ a collaboration between The Exchange and Anima-Mundi, 'Mother the Air is Blue, The Air is Dangerous’ was held in the F.E McWilliam Gallery in Northern Ireland, 'Black Smoke Rising’ toured from Mac Birmingham to Aberystwyth Arts Centre and Back From the Front presents: Shock and Awe – Contemporary Artists at War and Peace at the Royal West of England Academy. He has undertaken a number of public commissions including 'The Rites of Dionysus' for The Eden Project, 'The Minotaur' for The Royal Opera House and 'The Drummer' for Lemon Quay, Truro. A more political side to his work became evident in a number of sculptures responding to the issues of terrorism and The Iraq War. 'Tank on Fire' was awarded the selectors prize at the inaugural Threadneedle Prize in 2008 and the installation 'Casting a Dark Democracy' was reviewed in 2008 by Jackie Wullschlager of The Financial Times as ‘The most politically charged yet poetically resonant new work on show in London’. Shaw has been supported by the Kappatos Athens Art Residency, The Kenneth Armitage Foundation, The British School of Athens,The Delfina Studio Trust through residencies in Greece, Spain and a fellowship in London. Most recently as an Artist Fellow at the Kate Hamburger Centre for Advance Study in the Humanities of 'Law and Culture' In Bonn, Germany where he began work on ’The Birth of Breakdown Clown’ an existential sculptural work utilising sculpture, robotics and AI.

Youki Hirakawa 'A Candle’
video on monitor (33:50) . 145 x 83 x 5 cm . click to watch excerpt

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Youki Hirakawa is a Japanese contemporary artist born in Nagoya, Japan in 1983. He currently lives and works in Toyota, Japan following a recent long term residency in Berlin, Germany.  ‘A Candle’ is currently on show alongside 20 important and iconic works of art, by world renowned modern and contemporary artists, including Craigie Aitchison, Sir Tony Cragg, Martin Creed, Dame Barbara Hepworth, Dame Elisabeth Frink, Sir Antony Gormley, Bill Woodrow, Bruce Munro, Grayson Perry, Sir Eduardo Paolozzi, Mark Wallinger, Henry Moore, Conrad Shawcross and Lynn Chadwick in the milestone exhibition 'Celebrating 800 years of Spirit and Endeavour’ marking the 800th Anniversary of Salisbury Cathedral, its largest contemporary art exhibition for nearly two decades.

Through his still and installation-based video artwork, Youki Hirakawa explores a mysterious and immeasurable sense of time, loss and longing. His monochromatic imagery is imbued with a melancholic quality, reconnecting a fragile past with a vivid present casting questions over the future. Deftly contrasting static imagery and moving footage, his work recalls its basis in frames per second, through which Hirakawa questions and in turn plays with our sense of time. Hirakawa constructs his artworks as if to reveal hidden memories or narratives contained within the subject, resuscitating sensibilities that may have since been obscured, primarily through progressive human activity. Youki Hirakawa has exhibited extensively worldwide.

His inaugural solo exhibition ‘Secret Fire’ at Anima-Mundi was held in 2016. In 2017 he was finalist of Sovereign Asian Art Prize. Works are held in numerous public and private collections. Youki Hirakawa is represented by Anima Mundi.

Sax Impey 'The Light and the Veil'
oil and mixed media on panel, 183 x 122 cm


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Sax Impey is a British artist born in Penzance, Cornwall in 1969. He currently works from on of the prestigious Porthmeor Studios in St. Ives. Sax Impey’s paintings and drawings are often large scale, immersive and elemental incorporating staggering detail and dexterity and an expressive, behavioural use of medium. Since 2005, Impey has produced works derived almost exclusively from experiences at sea. A qualified RYA Yachtmaster he has sailed many thousands of nautical miles around the world. These extensive trips have had a profound impact on his life and subsequent development as an artist. Reconnecting with nature through this powerful element has the almost inescapable effect of calling to question some of life’s existential questions. This epiphanic moment of realisation, of revelation, is at the core of Impey’s oeuvre. Reflecting on and capturing personal moments and making them universal, Impey’s work reaffirms the importance of introspection and confrontation, found specifically when surrounded by the natural world; “A mind can breathe, and observe, and reflect, away from the shrill desperation of a culture that, having forgotten that it is better to say nothing than something about nothing, invents ever new ways to fill every single space with less and less.” 

After graduating from art college, Impey spent time in East Africa where he participated in film, theatre and performance projects before returning to Cornwall to paint. In 1995 he was elected a member of the Newlyn Society of Artists and in 1997 was awarded a 'Kunstbrucke' residency in Berlin. From 2005, he has collaborated with the cross-cultural, environmental art group Red Earth in the creation of site-specific installations including a multi media performance at Trafalgar Square, London and Birling Gap in Sussex. In 2007 Impey's work was selected for the ‘Art Now Cornwall’ exhibition at the Tate St Ives where he was placed on the cover of the associated publication. The same year he was heralded in The Times as one of the ‘New Faces of Cornish Art’. In 2010 Sax was featured in Owen Sheers's BBC4 Documentary ‘Art of the Sea (In Pictures)’ alongside Anish Kapoor, J. M. W. Turner, Martin Parr and Maggi Hambling among others. His work was selected as a finalist the 2013 Threadneedle Prize and the year before was elected an Academician at the Royal West of England Academy. Impey has had numerous exhibitions with Anima-Mundi securing a long term, fruitful working relationship. His paintings are in multiple collections including The Arts Council, Warwick University, the Connaught Hotel and the collections of Roman Abramovich and Lady Victoria Getty alongside other private collections worldwide. Sax Impey is represented by Anima Mundi.

Mat Chivers ‘Untitled I & II’
cast aluminium, 25 x 30 x 15 cm  /  25 x 30 x 20 cm


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A number of physical models were made where parameters were defined and a process set in motion. Using a combination of three or four equilateral triangles joined in an open configuration so that they partially enclose space. Chivers injected polyurethane foam into the void which then expanded, constrained by the containing geometry, matter expanding over time and in space until its energy balances with the physical variables that constitute it and the environment in which it was formed and its growth ceases. He then selected two objects from this series that he believed presented the most dynamic and archetypal forms which were then cast in aluminium The driving idea behind this group of sculptural works is that material phenomena are governed or defined by fundamental geometric principles. Bringing together two timelessly relevant and poetically rich ideas - symmetry in the form of a pure geometric framework and asymmetry as expressed through an entropic event.

Mat Chivers is a British artist born in Bristol, England in 1973. He currently works in Devon, UK and Toronto, Canada. Chivers’ artwork examines how fundamental phenomena that exist below the surface of things informs the way we experience the world around us. For Chivers, the process of making draws on combinations of analogue and digital technologies in works that embody a hybridisation of old-world and contemporary envisioning and production processes. Mat Chivers sculpture often incorporates the use of heavy, solid and dense media such as metal or stone, shifting the context of the raw material to reflect an ephemeral an indeterminate subject matter from cloud formations, waves data or altering climactic statistics. Through the materiality of his sensuous sculptures, drawings, prints and performance, he offers the viewer an alternative view of these notions.

The use of indeterminate forms to disrupt a determinate geometric pattern (or vice versa) has a mesmeric effect on our visual perception. From some perspectives the objects seem recognisable, from others they have an ambiguous quality as the forms are visually eroded by the geometry in the base material. This perceptual phenomenon acts as a metaphor for the contemporary digital moment in terms of how envisioning technology gives us a way of seeing elements in the world but simultaneously fragments it, unable to describe the totality of the relationships involved.

Chivers studied Fine Art at Nottingham Trent University and Escula de belles Artes, Barcelona (1993-6). A formative influence on Chivers’ practice are the years that he spent working and travelling in Southern Europe and Morocco, culminating in a journey overland to Iran, Pakistan, India & Nepal where he spent time in the mountains of the Hindu Kush, Zanskar and Himalaya. On his return to the UK he established a studio in Devon where he is now based but travels regularly on international artist residencies. His placement at the Nirox Residency in South Africa and the Kappatos Residency in Athens both culminated in major solo exhibitions. He has been involved in numerous cross-disciplinary projects with research scientists at The University of Bristol. His site-specific film work ‘Purbeck Vanitas’ was shown in 2012 as part of the commissioned project ExLab in conjunction with the Cultural Olympiad and The National Trust at the coastal UNESCO designated World Heritage site in Dorset. In 2014 he completed 'Axiom' a major public commission for the Mathematical Institute in Oxford. His work also features in many other collections internationally notably including the Berengo Collection, Italy, Crisis UK, Fitzwilliam Museum Cambridge, Mochary Collection, USA, Thelma Hulbert Gallery, Soho House and The Met Office. Chivers has been included in numerous high profile international exhibitions including ‘Daydreaming with Stanley Kubrick’ at Somerset House, 'Air: Visualising the Invisible in British Art 1768-2017’ at the RWA, Bristol, 'A Place In Time’ at Nirox Sculpture Park, South Africa, Premio Fondazione Henraux, Italy, 'Out Of Our Heads' in London, 'The Knowledge' at the Gervasuti Foundation, 54th Venice Biennale and 'Glasstress: White Light/White Heat', Pallazo Cavalli Franchett at the 55th Venice Biennale and a solo presentation at the Venice Biennale the same year titled 'Satyr' in association with Venice Arts Factory. Most recently Chivers has worked in Canada producing the major exhibition ‘Migrations’ at Musee D’art De Joilette and Arsenal Contemporary Art Montreal.

Joy Wolfenden Brown ‘Loss'
oil on paper   .   22 x 21 cm


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Joy Wolfenden Brown is a British artist born in Stamford, Lincolnshire in 1961. She currently lives in Bude, North Cornwall. Wolfenden Brown’s intimate oil paintings feel hauntingly familiar possessing a raw, emotional, honesty. She captures fleeting fragments of memory, moments in time where the inherent vulnerability of the figures depicted, often in isolation, is palpable.These are lovingly yet spontaneously executed reflections on the human condition, which have an unnervingly, yet simultaneously comforting, unguarded quality.

Joy Wolfenden Brown graduated from Leeds University then completed a post-graduate diploma in Art Therapy at Hertfordshire College of Art & Design. She worked as an art therapist for ten years before moving to Cornwall in 1999. Wolfenden Brown has had a number of sell out solo exhibitions and was the First Prize Winner in The National Open Art Competition, 2012. She was also awarded the Somerville Gallery painting prize in 2003 and first prizewinner at the Sherborne Open in 2007. Works were acquired by the Anthony Pettullo Outsider Art Collection in Milwaukee with further works held in collections worldwide. Wolfenden Brown has exhibited internationally with four solo exhibitions at Anima Mundi marking a long and fruitful working relationship. Joy Wolfenden Brown is represented by Anima Mundi.

Simon Averill ‘Restless'
acrylic on panel   .   61 x 183 cm


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Simon Averill is a British artist born in Brighton, England in 1961. He currently lives and works near Marazion in West Cornwall. With this translucent multi-layered painting, Averill re-considers what might take place within momentary instances of seeing; they are an exploration of the ways in which sight, memory and perception interact. These paintings are a translation of, and receptiveness to, intimate time spent within place and nature. Nature is of course, always changing, always in flux. The paintings respond to these unpredictable, fleeting moments of naturally occurring optical phenomenon and distortions to the senses. Experienced physically and biologically, in place and in time, something is present that was not there before. The experience is recovered after a lapse in time, through memory.

Averill studied Fine Art at Brighton Polytechnic and graduated with Honours. In 1986 he established a Printmaking Workshop near Penzance, Cornwall, which he ran until 1990. Since 1989 he has lectured at Falmouth University, where he is now a senior lecturer, specialising in painting and drawing. He has been a member of the Newlyn Society of Artists since the late 1980s. Averill has exhibited widely with exhibitions in the UK, Europe and USA including the Royal Academy of Arts Summer Show, The Discerning Eye exhibition at the Mall Galleries, Royal West of England Academy in Bristol, Sherborne House, Plymouth Museum, Plymouth Arts Centre, Truro Museum, Falmouth Art Gallery, Newlyn Art Gallery and the Festival Hall in Chicago, USA. Simon Averill is represented by Anima Mundi.

Massimo Angei 'Le visioni di Blake (Blake’s Vision)'
oil on panel  .  140 x 100 cm


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Massimo Angèi was born in La Spezia, Italy, he currently lives and works in Sarzana, near the borderline between Liguria and Tuscany. Following art school, he collaborated with various institutions and museums exhibiting early representational depictions of flora and fauna. After finishing his degree at the Fine Arts Academy in Carrara/Painting (Accademia di Belle Arti\Pittura), he participated in his first exhibitions, and the creation of the Idioma group along with Marco Casentini, Fabio Linari, Jacopo Bruno, Andrea Geremia. He then began to work as an independent freelance photographer working for photo agencies including Grazia Neri of Milan, and Bilderberg of Hamburg, publishing his images in both Italian and international magazines. A vivid dream in the spring of 2006 made him realise that his destiny was as a painter, and he vowed to never again abandon it. The artist has described his elemental and tempestuous oil paintings as reflecting varied emotional states, and his ethereal abstract compositions on various surfaces (canvas, Plexiglas, board) entertain multiple interpretations. Forms and scenes are suggested but never fully established. Several works evoke landscapes, weather patterns, and natural systems, the paintings often feature cloud-like billows of white and grey that clear in the canvas's center to reveal what could be a distant sky, illuminated with sparks of yellow: clarity found amid a storm-saturated sky.

Kate MccGwire 'Liminal'
mixed media with goose feathers in bespoke oak cabinet   .   76 x 57 x 50 cm


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Kate MccGwire is an internationally renowned British sculptor born in Norfolk, on the broads in 1964. She currently lives and works in London. MccGwire's practice probes the beauty inherent in duality, employing natural materials to explore the play of opposites at an aesthetic, intellectual and visceral level. Her connection with nature and fascination with birds was nurtured from an early age, with avian subjects and materials a recurring theme in her artwork. 

Since graduating from the Royal College of Art in 2004 her uncanny sculptures have been widely collected, including Saatchi Collection, Thomas Olbricht collection, Reydan Weiss Collection, Shenghua Art Centre, Nanjing, China, University College for the Creative Arts, Hampshire County Council Collection, Temple Newsam Collection, Art Omi Collection and the Tia Collection. Exhibitions include the Saatchi Gallery (London), the Museum of Art and Design (New York), Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature (Paris), the Choistro del Bramante (Rome) and Glasstress, at the Venice Biennale. 

Sarah Ball ‘Elliot’
oil on gessoed panel   .   24 x 18 cm


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Sarah Ball is a British artist born in Yorkshire, England in 1965. She currently lives and works in west Cornwall. Her practice relies on the gathering of found source material, from newspaper cuttings, archival photographs historical documentation, including criminal ‘mug shot’ archives and immigration archives and more recently social media. She selects subjects with, and without, known narratives. From these images, Ball paints intricate portraits that re-establish the imagined life of the often anonymous, unknowing sitter. Physiognomy is a primary concern. This supposedly outdated practice, whereby character or morality are decided by the geometries of a face, was a common 19th century method, which dictated that an individual’s appearance was connected to their ethics and character. Sarah Ball’s paintings reflect her intrigue with these concepts and the history of the people she encounters. The painted portraits are placed upon a neutral background with space around them, allowing for a metaphorical clean slate so that the viewer can investigate each subject close up in intimate detail. The viewer is compelled to empathise with the subject and draw their own conclusions and perhaps contemplate how we still continue to judge others based on aesthetics and assumption. 

Sarah Ball studied at Newport Art College in the early 80s, followed by a MFA at Bath Spa University from 2003 - 2005. She has exhibited widely and Internationally. Her work has been shown at the Threadneedle Prize, The Royal Academy, Somerset House and The V&A Museum. Works are included in collections worldwide including The Rachofsky Collection, The Kistefos Museum and the British Museum permanent collection. Sarah Ball is represented by Anima Mundi where she has held five solo exhibitions to date

John Robinson ‘Dutch Landscape Painting’ & ‘Im Trying Hard to Fit In'
oil on canvas  .   40 x 50 cm / 50 x 40 cm


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John Robinson was born in Worcester in 1981, where he still resides. His aim is to use his ‘self portrait’ images as a way of making himself indestructible, to make himself slip out of time, to confront the things he loves and hates and to pour time into the surfaces of the paintings. To transcend himself whilst constantly being held up against the past.

Robinson studied Fine Art at Falmouth College of Arts (awarded First class honours) spending most of the time whilst there skipping tutorials to travel to Plymouth to be taught by the notorious and idiosyncratic painter Robert Lenkiewicz, who ignited an interest in how to evoke colour through grey alongside wider interest in occult literature and artwork experienced in Lenkiewicz’s famed private library. Robinson was awarded the Richard Ford Scholarship by the Royal Academy of Arts and spent a summer as artist in residence at the Prado Museum Madrid absorbing the works of Velazquez and Goya alongside the city’s nightlife. He stayed in Madrid for a further decade broken by a year at Central Saint Martins on a Masters degree in fine art. In London he developed his use of ‘the painting’ as a disguise; ‘self portrait as (other…)’. Robinson has exhibited internationally. He has won the Peter Spicer Award for Excellence in Creative Arts (First Place), Richard Ford Award for Painting, Royal Academy, London (First Place), South Square Trust Scholarship for MA study at Byam Shaw school of Art, Central Saint Martins, London, Alfa Romeo Award Art (‘Best of show nominee’) Madrid, Spain, Premio de Pintura Focus-Abengoa, Seville, Spain (Winner) and the Hauser and Wirth Prize, Hauser and Wirth Somerset UK, (First Prize). Works are held in notable collections including University of the Arts London permanent collection, London, UK, Nicolas & Maxinne Leslau collection, London, UK, Focus-Abengoa Foundation, Seville, Spain, Coldwell Banker, Madrid, Spain, Falmouth College of Arts Library, Falmouth UK, Museo del Ferrocarril, Madrid, Spain, Stedlijk Museum Amsterdam Netherlands, Wellcome Collection London UK, British Council Collection UK.

Carlos Zapata ‘Hermit'
polychrome wood   .   17 x 14 x 14 cm


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Carlos Zapata is a Colombian artist born in 1963. He currently lives near Falmouth, Cornwall. Zapata makes idiosyncratic carved and painted sculpture and installation, primarily from wood. His work deals with many challenging and potent themes from poverty, conflict, religion and race, yet paradoxically, the overriding characteristics of the work are of empathy and compassion. Zapata’s work belongs to and takes inspiration from Folk and Tribal Arts from all over the world but specifically from South America, from its indigenous populous and the trade routes and traditions that have fed it over the centuries. Many of his sculptures have evolved from personal experience of living in a foreign land and from his home country where civil issues continue to trouble its people. Zapata has exhibited International with works held in numerous private collections and museums around the world. Carlos Zapata is represented by Anima Mundi.

Michael Porter 'Vanitas'
oil and acrylic on paper . 44 x 38 cm


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Michael Porter was born 1948 in Derbyshire, UK, he currently lives and works in Newlyn, Cornwall. For the past 20 years he has worked exclusively from the landscape, always using locationas that he has been familiar with over long periods of time as the paintings incorporate both time past and time present. He respects the native tradition of landscape painting whilst reinventing it by means of his innovatory techniques and personal vision. His prolific technical experiments have been harnessed to a radical form of realism resulting in works that are equivalent to natural phenomena and which take the viewer into metaphysical realms. 

At the age of 15 he attended nearby Nottingham college of Art and later Derby College of Art completing both ungraduate and post-graduate studies at Chelsea School of Art, finished his academic training as Fellow in Fine Art at Gloucestershire College of Art in 1973. From 1974 he worked in the same studio in Hackney, East London until his move to Cornwall in 1997 during this period he lectured in most major Art Schools in London and the provinces as well as several throughout Europe. His work has been regularly exhibited in museums and contemporary galleries in London, Europe and America and has been the recipient of numerous major awards including The National Gallery Artist in residence, The Lorne Award London University, The Odin Award RWA, Honorary doctorate from Derby University and more recently Honorary Fellow of University College Falmouth. Collections include The Arts Council, The British Council, Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, Bolton Art Museum, Buxton Museum and Art Gallery, The Contemporary Art Society, the Department of the Environment, Derby Museum and Art Gallery, University of Derby, Deutsche Bank, Government Art Collection, Harewood House, Josef and Anni Albers Foundation, CT, USA, Leicestershire Education Authority, Mag Collection,Ferens Art Gallery, Hull, National Gallery, Canberra, Australia, National Gallery, Cape Town, South Africa, National Gallery, London, Nature in Art Museum, Gloucester, New York Public Library. Nottingham University, Reynolds, Porter, Chamberlain Collection, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, Smolyan Art Gallery, Bulgaria, Sunderland Museum, Unilever, Victoria and Albert Museum, Warsaw Contemporary Art Museum, Poland, Warwick University, Westminster Hospital, The Whitworth Gallery, Manchester and Yale Centre for British Art.

James Seow 'The Garden Path'
print on acrylic with LED-backlit lighbox   .  113 x 130 cm


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London-based artist James Seow works across a range of media and techniques including print, photography, sculpture and installation. He works using multiple media, forming dialogues with various disciplines where the exchange of information, material and techniques is a continuing source of inspiration. Seow’s hybrid Malaysian and British identity often inspires architectural, urban and nature themes in his work. This interest is very much rooted in his earlier upbringing back in Malaysia. There, he witnessed a huge transformation of the country through mass deforestation and urban planning policies during the 1990s. Since then the theme of Nature’s relationship with urban life has very much informed his work. Often using site / place, for example public squares, parks and gardens, to exemplify human attempts to impose order on natural forces, his work depicts the struggle between the natural and the artificial, the rational and the instinctual. He continues to observe and investigate a wide range of cultural, socio-political, technological, environmental and aesthetic issues.

Seow’s work has been exhibited internationally and is in the collection of various private individuals as well as Central St Martins School of Art and Design, Royal College of Art, Brookfield Asset Management Inc. and St James, Berkeley Group, UK.

Roger Thorp & Jesse Leroy Smith ‘The Pantheist’
video (8.12 looping) . Click to Watch Film

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Roger Thorp is a British artist born in Chapel-en-le-Frith in Derbyshire in 1955. He currently lives and works in Cornwall. ’The Pantheist’ is a collaboration with the painter Jesse Leroy Smith. Thorp’s artwork consists of still images exhibited alongside complex, multi-media, immersive and participatory installations. Thorp’s work effectively transmits his enormous sensitivity towards the earth, humanity and spirituality, becoming a manifestation of deep joy and a proclamation of existence for those who forget where they are going. After leaving lm school, Roger Thorp started out as a runner in the film industry, moving on to work as Producer and PM on music videos for U2, The Clash, Iggy Pop and others. Thorp has also directed programmes for NGO’s such as WWF, ILO and the Red Cross, working in Australia, Mongolia and the USA. He has also made two feature films.

Other work by Roger as a writer/director has been screened in Rome, Barcelona, Copenhagen and London. In 2004 he co-founded the art-house online gallery ‘Littlesong lms’ and in 2015 he founded ‘The Olive Network’ a sophisticated web platform built to foster tolerance and understanding throughout diverse global communities by focusing on the positive long term contributions of charity, the arts and humanities. Roger exhibits his work internationally and he is represented by Anima Mundi.

Harriet Bell 'Untitled’
pencil and book cutting collage on paper   .   70 x 100 cm


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Harriet Bell is a British artist born in Turkey in 1950. She has lived and studied in the USA, Jamaica, South America and France, and currently lives in West Cornwall. This work is selected from a series titled ‘That Luminous Body That Care of The Soul’, a collection of intricate, almost forensic, works on large sheets of paper incorporating delicate drawing with collage taken from found books. These ultra sensitive works record a seemingly dream-like, interconnected journey. Rather like a botanist using specimens for scientific analysis, Bell selectively displays her findings, taking us beyond the realms of prosaic understanding of life and, indeed, what lies beyond. The ever-changing cycle of life. Absence, presence, death and decay, growth and metamorphosis all ‘feel’ pertinent when looking at her visions. Her work is multifaceted ranging from sculptural components, to installation, to drawing, made in private and very rarely shown. There is no specific narrative to the work but Bell often ‘borrows’ words and often rearranges those words, which are then cast like seeds. The images that she works from are stored in the details and intuitions of her life, her inner culture. Running from one to another, becoming clarified and whittled down of extraneous material, being forced – in the end – to express the essence of themselves. Her objective is to make work that is completely integrated; each piece to contain it’s meaning within but emanating that meaning as a presence around it. Bell is an artist who remains suspicious of artist’s statements. Feeling that there is a sense that translating the meaning of the work in to the written word distracts from the language that the work itself contains. So her works must be experienced and the results of doing so are profoundly moving and personal. The only words present in the exhibition catalogue for her most recent solo exhibition catalogue were “We all have to leave”, this simple ‘summing up’ leaves little doubt that Bell is an artist who is able to just say it, without having to say much at all, it also gives clear insight in to the preoccupation of her artistic and existential questioning. 

Despite her reclusive nature Harriet Bell’s works have been exhibited internationally, with major works acquired for private and public collections. Bell was a prizewinner at Jacksonville Museum in Florida in 1980, the Halifax Art Festival Merit Award winner in 1980, the Arkansas Art Centre Purchase Award winner in 1984 and the Jacksonville Museum Purchase Award winner in 1986. She was awarded the State of Florida Individual Artist Fellowship in 1987 and the SECCA/RHR Southeastern Artists Fellowship in 1989. She has exhibited at the North Miami Museum, Jacksonville Art Museum, South Florida Art Museum, Florida and Cantini Musee in Paris, Provincial Museum Haselt in Belgium, Centre d’Art in Barcelona, Museum of Fine Arts in Miami, the Tate St Ives and extensively throughout the USA, UK and Europe. Her work is in number of art collections including the British Museum, the Florida House of Representatives, Florida State University, The Keleia Collection, City of Orlando, Arkansas Art Centre, Jacksonville Art Centre, The Rouse Company, Vero Beach Centre for the Arts, Hartsfield Airport in Atlanta, Southern Bell.

Evelyn Williams 'Men by the Sea'
oil on canvas  .  100 x 135 cm


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Evelyn Williams was born in 1929 and died in 2012. Her tender, intimate and emotional paintings are concerned with the subtleties and complexities of relationships and the human predicament. Dealing with the intimate connection and profound solitude of existence, taking the viewer on a profound journey from womb to tomb. 

Williams trained at St Martin’s School of Art from the age of 15 and then the Royal College of Art working alongside the older, largely male students, many of them soldiers returning from service in the second world war. Despite failing health she continued painting right up to her death at the age of 83. Williams proved difficult for some to categorise during her life time, but is regarded, along with friends such as Paula Rego, as having forged a path for female artists. She later founded a trust in her name which has done modest but important work to support artists, particularly women, and the practice of drawing. As Huon Mallalieu stated “Her work deserves to be as well-known as those of her fellow 1961 John Moores prize-winners, Blake, Blow, Hockney, Kitaj, Kossoff, McWilliam and Uglow.” 

Harminder Judge 'Untitled (Two Candles Separated by the Ocean)'
plaster, polymer, pigment, oil, wax   .   25 x 25 x 4 cm


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Harminder Judge was born in 1982, he currently lives and works in London. Exploring ideas centred around the universality of condition, tantra, spiritual and cultural cross pollination, Judge’s work takes the form of performance, video, installation and painting. Harminder’s work has engaged with many subjects but there is a continuous exploration of portals, be it spiritual, political, or personal. His paintings engage with a history of abstract image making in India brought about through ritual referencing both the internal and external body and our place within the cosmos. His performance work has brought ancient Indian folklore and mysticism into direct contact with bombastic western contemporary music and live colour field painting; collided, occult inspired, dreamscapes with hazy laser penetrated reverse baptisms; transported field recordings made in his family’s Gurdwara in Punjab, across the world, replaying them through a speaker system lodged in his throat.

Judge completed his BA at Northumbria University in 2005 and received a postgraduate diploma from the Royal Academy Schools in 2020. He has exhibited widely notably including The Royal Academy, London; Halle 14 Centre For Contemporary Art, Leipzig; IKON Gallery, Birmingham; CCA Warsaw and The New Art Gallery Walsall. 

Samuel Bassett 'Between the Clouds and They’
mixed media on canvas   .   200 x 180 cm


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Samuel Bassett is a British artist born Cornwall in 1982. He currently works in West Cornwall. His artworks display a boundless zeal, sharp humour and honest pathos made with creative, experimental, freedom. His language of mark-making varies from raw sweeping gestures to draughtsman-like drawn or sgraffitto schematics. His dexterity enables him to effortlessly capture scattered images of his inner monologue - often erratic, often pinpoint. The ups and downs. The highs and lows. His paintings could be described as a form of ‘psychological cubism’, where the inner and the outer self reveal themselves and coalesce. His autobiographical work maps a fast paced and over-active mind searching for the personal and universal meaning and in turn reflect both positive and negative concerns about 21st century society and the wider human condition. His most recent works imbue a deep rooted connection to place, the sea and landscape, as well as community and heritage. The localised placement of these cautionary tales become allegorical for broader more universal hopes and wider loss, fear and disconnection. St Ives has been his family’s home since 1695. The artistic traditions of the town had an undoubted influence over his development, but his Grandfather, a fisherman by trade was also a keen amateur painter, as was his other Grandfather in Newlyn. The young Bassett was supported early on with encouragement and painting materials. Bassett ’s studio space is part of a complex that coincidently sits above his Grandfather’s former net loft. He studied in Bournemouth, England and then lived in London but the pull of the sea brought him home. In addition to his own practice Bassett founded LETH projects, a curatorial platform for emergent artists. Bassett has exhibited internationally including four solo exhibitions at Anima Mundi, a solo exhibition at Kornfeld Gallery in Berlin and solo presentations at START at the Saatchi Gallery in London and CODE Art Fair, Copenhagen. Works are held in an increasing number of collections worldwide including the acquisition of the work ‘Lost Karensa’ by Tremenheere Sculpture Park which is permanently exhibited alongside James Turrell, Kishio Suga, Richard Long and David Nash among others. Bassett has been featured in numerous articles included Christies magazine and The New York post which is indicative of a notable and rapid increase in the artists popularity and ambition. Samuel Bassett is represented by Anima Mundi.