"Hope" is the thing with feathers

“Hope” is the thing with feathers - That perches in the soul - And sings the tune without the words - And never stops - at all - And sweetest - in the Gale - is heard - And sore must be the storm - That could abash the little Bird That kept so many warm - I’ve heard it in the chillest land - And on the strangest Sea - Yet - never - in Extremity, It asked a crumb - of me. - Emily Dickinson (b. 1830-1886 in Massachusetts) What sort of ‘thing’ is this that faces the storm that seems to sometimes silence that song? Hope - expectation - anticipation - How do we look forward? Does this involve seeing? This group exhibition explores what it means to look forward, while reflecting on the past and the present. Joshua Armitage (b. 1986 in Dewsbury, UK, lives and works in London) presents paintings from a recent body of work depicting open doors. Some doorways lead to recognisable urban environments, others appear to lead to imagined places. Given motifs recur within Armitage’s work (building facades, houses or aeroplanes) and allows for the varying applications of paint and colour to create a range of atmospheres. Recent solo exhibitions include Condo Complex 2020, The Sunday Painter & Lulu (London, 2020). Selected recent group shows include Dialogues No.01, Centre for Recent Drawing (London, 2021), Last Minute, hArts Lane (London, 2021) and Works on Paper, Blue Shop Cottage (London, 2020). Malcolm Bradley (b. 1992, lives and works in London) uses a tactile printing technique to produce images on zinc (hydrographic printing). The work presented here is the result of an altered state of consciousness during and after a seizure. The initial imagery is from moments that are collected incidentally on his camera over time. Moments such as when his camera is running in his pocket, leaving an abstracted image which calls to mind phosphenes, the lights one can see when ones eyes are closed.   Recent exhibitions and publications include FIELDNOTES Inaugural issue (2021), Odds, Royal Shopping Centre (Southend, 2019), Keratin, Charlton Gallery (London, 2019), Direct Input, Muddy Yard (London, 2018) and Exquisite Corpse, 126 Gallery, (Galway, 2018). Tom Hardwick-Allan (b. 1996 in Derbyshire, UK, lives and works in London) metabolises over time single sheets of birch plywood with chisels, pens, a router and an angle grinder. The carved reliefs emerge from scratching away at an array of surfaces. They are guided by a principle of negation in this searching excavation, where revision is a means of staying in dialogue with the work. The wings call to mind the underside of old school desks, scratched into with a compass and filled in with biro. Recent solo exhibitions include Going Light, Zarinbal Khoshbakht (Cologne, 2021). Selected group exhibitions include Casting the Runes, 108 Fleet Street (London, 2021), Winter Wonderland, Fan Fiction International (Hyde Park, 2021), The Correspondence, Residence Gallery (London, 2020), Flow my Tears, Acud Galerie (Berlin, 2020), In the tame beasts eyes, Zarinbal Khoshbakht (Cologne, 2020) and Breathless: London Art Now, Ca’ Pesaro (Venice, 2019). Julie Maurin (b. 1993 in Marseilles, France, lives and works between London and Marseilles) combines the organic and synthetic ranging from found objects, industrial materials to plants and crustaceans .Her interest lies in the ambivalent relationship humans have with nature. Calling to mind dried creatures or relics of the intertidal zone, Maurin has been marked by the devastation that wildfires have left in Southern France. Recent solo exhibition include Soaking in Chemicals, Dungeon (Detroit, 2021). Selected group exhibitions include TerrainVagues, Limbo Space (Geneva, 2021), Space Lapse, Royal Society of Sculptors (London 2021) and The days are just packed, The Pool (Istanbul, 2020). Holly Mills (b. 1990 in London, UK, lives and works in London) creates ambiguous spaces of fact and fiction, the observed and imagined. These remembered journeys and imagined landscapes weave in references from Victorian samplers to Indian miniatures. The threads of thought and familiar archetypes give form to the sensations and feelings of places the artist has experienced. Selected exhibitions include WHELM, Leicester Contemporary (Leicester, 2021), Amongst the Chaos, 155a Gallery (London, 2021), Under Bat Hill, W139 (Amsterdam, 2021), The first swing of the bat, Gallery 46 (London, 2021) and The Pictionary Individual, Real Pain Fire Arts (Los Angeles, 2019). Siggi Sekira (b. 1987 in Odessa, Ukraine, lives and works in Vienna) draws from Slavic mythology, 1900’s Wiener Werkstatte (Vienna Workshop) to pop-culture following the fall of the USSR. Each laboriously worked drawing is a garland of self-portraits, associations, family stories and unfortunate coincidences, which create a new narrative and an alternative, macabre, memory of her life events. The closed eyes and floating body parts creates the uncertainty of convalescence. Recent solo/duo exhibitions include Contrappunto (alongside Danielle Pamp), Vin Vin (Vienna 2021), Artist Statement, Parallel (Vienna, 2020) and Bilingual (alongside Kalle Lindmark), Soyuz (Pescara, IT, 2019). Selected recent group shows include Sweet Lies, Ludwig Forum (Aachen, 2021), Eco Flirt: Vanitas, Smolka Contemporary (Vienna, 2021), Exhibition of miniature art, Tiny Art Gallery (The Hague, 2021), Birds Shun Such Trees (online), Et al (San Francisco, 2021), Cruel Summer Camp, EXILE (Vienna, 2020), Blasted Heath, Galerie A.M (Prague, 2020) and Fever Dream, Gianni Manhattan (Vienna, 2019). Siggi has recently presented work in her first institutional exhibition entitled Sweet Lies at Ludwig Forum, Aachen, Germany.