Press Release
‘Beyond Borders’
Barbara Nicholls, Rebecca Meanley, Andrew Hewish
Encounters, Stand P21, London Art Fair 2023
Aleph Contemporary presents works on paper by three leading contemporary artists in a new section at London Art Fair 2023. Encounters (formerly Art Projects), curated by Pryle Behrman, features what is considered the freshest contemporary art from across the globe, and gives a platform to up and coming galleries who represent the best of emerging talent working in exciting new ways.
Barbara Nicholls, Rebecca Meanley, and Andrew Hewish represent a variety of approaches to making with a series of abstract works on paper. These works range across material experimentation, demonstrating process, chance, and action. Material is dragged, cut, spread, glued, and lined, with each acting quite differently on the viewer, producing scattered pespectival fragments as visual spectacle. Colour fields of experience and embodiment express paradigms of living within and aside of nature.
Barbara Nicholls:
“Nicholls has followed the idiosyncrasies in the behaviour of her materials and has orchestrated them into resonant shapes that, while never declaring themselves in any specific identity, nonetheless touch collective memories of the experience of natural spaces, of the landscape. In that way, she formulates a new reality.”
~ Martin Holman, Art Historian and Writer
Rebecca Meanley:
“Gestures applied in a water-based binder remain semi-transparent, tinting their neighbours and building their own spatial presence, a little like the cloudlike semi-density of a Jackson Pollock.”
~ Ben Street, Art Historian and writer
Andrew Hewish:
"Spontaneous, explosive or reminiscent of landscape after snowfall”
~ Vivienne Roberts, Gallerist
Notes to Editors:
Barbara Nicholls
- ENDS-
Barbara Nicholls (b.1963) holds a Doctorate in Fine Art and an MFA (1996-98)from the University of East London and a BA in Fine Art from Goldsmith’s College (1982-86). She is widely respected for her abstract works, which are held in various museums and public collections such as the Museum Kurhaus Kleve, Germany, The New Art Gallery, Walsall, and Kings College Hospital, London. Nicholls’ works have also been introduced into a number of private collections worldwide and have won her bursaries and awards, including a grant from the British Council. The artist has exhibited in almost twenty solo shows to date and has an extensive exhibition record internationally.
Rebecca Meanley
Rebecca Meanley (b.1976) lives and works in London and begun her PhD at Glasgow School of Art in September 2022. She holds an MA in Fine Art from Chelsea College of Art (2003), and a BA in Fine Art from Nottingham Trent University (1999), with an additional First Year: Painting at Glasgow School of Art (1995-6). Meanley is also Senior Lecturer in Visual Art Practice, part-time, at the University of Bedfordshire. Her selected solo exhibitions include Cadogan Contemporary, London (2017), Project Space, London (2016), Barbican Arts Group Trust, London (2012),The Hat Factory, Luton, Bedfordshire (2011) and Inside Space Gallery, London, (2002). Her works have been selected for a series of reputable group shows globally with her most
recent in Aleph Contemporary, The Aesthetics of Enchantment in Abstract Art, 2022, and Kunstgenerator, Geneva, Switzerland (2019).
Andrew Hewish
Andrew Hewish is a London-based artist and curator whose work focuses on painting, drawing and sculpture. He holds a PhD from the Royal College of Art (RCA) and is a Senior Lecturer in Fine Art at the School of Art, Architecture and Design. He was awarded a British Empire Medal in 2020 for his services to the arts and has been awarded both for his academic achievements and for his artistic practice respectively, including the METSU Award for Outstanding Lecturer and a shortlisting for the John Moore’s Painting Prize (2014). His works are held in the Victoria and Albert Museum (NAL), the Brooklyn Art Library and in private collections in the UK and USA, and his artworks have been featured in solo and group exhibitions worldwide.
Aleph Contemporary
Aleph Contemporary is a roving London-based contemporary art gallery with an international roster of emerging and mid-career artists and a forward-looking programme of curated exhibitions and events as well as collections, publications and virtual exhibitions. The name comes from Jorge Luis Borges' strange tale The Aleph, in which everything in the whole universe can be seen in a tiny sphere, simultaneously and without distortion or overlapping. It reflects the gallery’s commitment to the importance of dialogue, invention, and the value of experiencing and understanding art today. www.alephcontemporary.com info@alephcontemporary.com Instagram: @aleph.contemporary Twitter: @AlephContempor1 Facebook:@alephcontemporary #alephcontemporary
London Art Fair
London Art Fair, founded in 1989 by London’s Business Design Centre in Islington, showcases exceptional Modern and Contemporary Art to discover and to buy. It launched with a modest 32 galleries and has now grown to encompass over 100 leading galleries and dealers in Modern and Contemporary Art, with 20,000 visitors to the fair. London Art Fair provides an established home for Modern British Art, whilst embracing an increasingly international and contemporary outlook, with new galleries from around the world.
www.londonartfair.co.uk Facebook: @Londonartfair Instagram: @londonartfair Twitter: @LondonArtFair #londonartfair
‘Beyond Borders’
Barbara Nicholls, Rebecca Meanley, Andrew Hewish Stand P21, Encounters, London Art Fair
18 – 22 January 2023
Business Design Centre, Islington
52 Upper Street, London, N1 0QH
Press contacts: Jessica Wood, Holly Finch, Arts Media Contacts
aleph@artsmediacontacts.co.uk holly@artsmediacontacts.co.uk Tel: +44 (0)7939 226988
