London Calling

Helen Beard (b.1971) is a Brighton-based artist with a BA, Bournemouth and Poole College of Art and Design (1992). Her works lie between abstraction and representation, reducing figures to vibrant fields of colour. Through this joyous use of bright colouring, Beard seeks to reclaim depictions of the body and of the sexual from the predominant male perspective. Beard portrays the act of sex with a striking level of intimacy.

Alma Berrow (b. 1992) is a British artist who creates intricate ceramic sculptures. Berrow originally studied Art and Textiles at Falmouth University but over the first lockdown, due to covid-19, she decided to explore the field of ceramics. Her bold practice playfully redefines the still life genre, depicting overflowing ashtrays or elaborate plates of food that convey contemporary, familiar moments of everyday life.

Tracey Emin (b. 1963) is a British artist known for her autobiographical and confessional artwork. Born in London, Emin studied at the Maidstone College of Art and at the Royal College of Art in her home city. Alongside artist Sarah Lucas in 1993, Emin opened The Shop, where she and Lucas exhibited and sold their work. The next year, Emin held her first solo exhibition, brazenly titled My Major Retrospective, and exhibited her work over the next few years in a gallery called The Tracey Emin Museum. Emin produces work in a variety of media including drawing, painting, sculpture, film, photography, neon text and sewn appliqué.

Jake Wood-Evans (b.1980) is considered one of the leading figures of contemporary British painting. He holds a BA Hons in Fine Art from Falmouth University, and was subsequently awarded a scholarship from the Royal Academy for classical study at the Prado museum in Madrid. Drawing on the legacy of 18th century British masters, Wood-Evans’ work has been viewed as much-needed escapism from a world dominated by the digital.

Amy Hui Li (b. 1997) is a Cantonese artist based in London. She is currently receiving an MA in Painting from the Royal College of Art after receiving a Graduate Diploma at the same college and a BA Fine Art degree from Goldsmiths, University of London (2020). Using home-made felt materials in the colour red to represent our blood vessels and the interior of the body, Li’s paintings explore our hidden damaged emotions as well as the process of self-healing and repairing. In a laborious manner, she repeatedly tears and reshapes her home-made felt materials, expressing fragility, brokenness, and an intention to care.

Nick Hornby (b 1980), is a British artist living and working in London, England. Hornby studied at Slade School of Art and Chelsea College of Art where he was awarded the UAL Sculpture Prize. His work addresses queer identity, historical critique, semiotics and digital technology. He is known for his monumental site-specific works that combine digital software with traditional materials such as bronze, steel, granite and marble.

Henry Hudson (b.1982) is a British artist living and working in London. He graduated from Central St. Martins College of Art and Design, London, UK in 2005. Hudson’s practice is expressed through the exploration of various techniques and materials, including ceramics, plasticine, scagliola, oil painting, 3D printing, wax, sand and textiles. His practice is inspired by a multitude of sources, new and old, in which British art plays a formative role, including work by Leon Kossoff, Frank Auerbach and William Hogarth.

David Hockney (b. 1937) is an English painter, drauftsman, printmaker, stage designer, and photographer. Hockney began his art education at the Bradford School of Art in 1953, studying there for four years under Frank Lisle. He furthered his education at the Royal College of Art from 1959 to 1962. As an important contributor to the pop art movement of the 1960s, he is considered one of the most influential British artists of the 20th century. Hockney’s first solo exhibition was in 1963, just one year after his graduation from the Royal College of Art, at Kasmin Limited in London. The first major retrospective of Hockney’s early works opened in London’s Whitechapel Gallery in April of 1970, before traveling to three other European institutions. In 2020 a retrospective of Hockney's work from the 1950s to the present day was held by The Lightbox, Woking, and Drawing From Life was held at the National Portrait Gallery.

Betty Leung

Betty Leung is a visual artist based in London. She holds an MA from Camberwell College, University of Art London (2020). Her multimedia practice is concerned with social, economic and political complexities in the context of human behaviour. She uses algorithms to explore the tension between chance and control by printing digitally rendered imagery onto fabric and transforming them into textile sculptures. In 2022 she showed her work in a solo exhibition with Unit London’s online programme Platform. Recent group exhibitions include NFTism: No Fear in Trying, Unit London (2021) and Chance and Control: The Art of Letting Go, Slash Arts Gallery, London (2021).

Haeji Min (b.1995) is a London-based South Korean artist. Min received a BFA Fine Art at the Slade School of Fine Art, University College London (2020) and an MFA Painting at the Royal College of Art (2023). Min’s subject-matter and inspiration range from a glimpse of a geometric shadow to her internal conflicts, a value in life, and the consequences of socio-political and nature crises.

London-based artist Annie Morris (b.1978) studied at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris between 1997 and 2001 under Giuseppe Penone before completing her education at the Slade School of Fine Art in London. Morris’ multi-disciplinary practice draws on both personal experience and the history of art. Morris' most recognizable body of work is her ‘Stack’ series, begun in 2014 and inspired by the artist’s grief following a stillbirth.

Effie Wanyi Li (b. 1995) is a Chinese artist based in London. She received a BA in Fine Art from Central Saint Martins College of Art & Design in 2019 and is currently studying an MA in Painting at the Royal College of Art. Li's paintings reflect her strong passion for investigating the internal mechanisms of the body, both physical and psychological. Her practice often focuses on exploring the alternative structure of the inner human body and its reaction caused by mental states. Li’s work aims to make sense of how human beings actually function, using painting as a synchronous dialogue with her body and mind.

Grayson Perry (b. 1960) is an English contemporary artist, writer and broadcaster. He studied at Braintree College of Further Education (1979) and graduated from Portsmouth Polytechnic in 1982. He was awarded the Turner Prize in 2003. Perry's vases have classical forms and are decorated in bright colours, depicting subjects at odds with their attractive appearance. There is a strong autobiographical element in his work, in which images of Perry as "Claire", his female alter-ego, and "Alan Measles", his childhood teddy bear, often appear.

Alfie Rouy (b. 1998) was born in Sittingbourne, and is based in London, UK. He received his BA in Fine Art at University of the Arts London, Camberwell in 2021. Influenced by Hilma Af Klint’s spiritual work with De Fem in the early 1900s, Rouy creates intuitive, surrealist works that are formulated by an array of hazy colours. His practice is characterised by confined, yet free-flowing forms that explore the evolution of the soul and the oneness of all.

Gavin Turk (b. 1967) is a British artist from Guildford in Surrey, and is considered to be one of the Young British Artists. Turk's oeuvre deals with issues of authenticity and identity, engaged with modernist and avant-garde debates surrounding the 'myth' of the artist and the 'authorship' of a work of art.

Lian Zhang (b. 1984) is a London-based Chinese artist. She received her first MA in Painting from the China Academy of Art, Hangzhou in 2010 and a second MA from the Royal College of Art, London in 2013. Zhang’s recent painting practice focuses on the collection and combination of images with various spatiotemporal aspects. Through these pictorial compositions, spatial memory is fabricated, leading to multiple narrative threads.