Why Hand-Crafted Portraits Are Vital Today

In this group of artists, intimacy, memory and abstraction converge in various methods, however all share a level of sensitivity to the short lived: the ignored image, the half-remembered location, the unstable limit in between what we see and what we feel. Together, they form a quiet however insistent meditation on how meaning builds up in regular life.

Taken together, rendered in her unique painterly design, these retellings of easily-forgotten minutes show how a normal life, when analyzed from a particular viewpoint, starts to radiate a palpable sense of significance.Rosemary Burn Bowl of cherries, 2025 Mona Sultan's photocollages explain the fragmentary nature of memory and meaning, calling photographic truth into question by breaking down, recontextualising and duplicating images. Balancing organized accuracy with a definitely human, necessarily imperfect visual perceptiveness, his paintings are easy going abstractions for the digital age.Luke Rudolf Fizzog 4, 2025 Jo Berry's airbrushed paintings offer physical kinds to images that we typically see through a screen andquickly forget, such as stock photographs and ReCAPTCHAs. To me, her distinct language hazy, misshaped, subtly upsetting reflects the alienation and dissociation intrinsic in a world filled with images that appears to appear and disappear ever-more quickly. A shadow, a handstand, a large curtain draped over a houseplant: by photographing such things, he gives them a 2nd life in which they end up being irreversible. Emile Kees Handstand, 2023 Jo Hummel's minimalist abstractions have a certain ahistorical quality; they link several histories of material experimentation and development from all over the world within an unique visual language. They position the viewer within landscapes that feel endless with a low mist hanging over the horizon. Though unfamiliar, these images are deeply peaceful, inviting you to enjoy the easy satisfaction of a constantly twilit, pastoral world.Llus-Carles Peric Cap a La Calma, 2014 The scenes that Bianca MacCall paints a train window reflecting the carriage's interior over the passing landscape; a barely-visible vehicle hidden by an ochre-yellow drape appear intentionally mysterious. They make me think about the synchronised absurdity and beauty of the world in front of me, thinking about familiar scenes through an unknown lens. Bianca MacCall Continuous Movement, 2023 Henry Ward's painting practice is ever-shifting. If you stand in front of one of his paintings for long enough, you might see it change in real time. The unclear, unpredictable nature of his work is what makes me keep going back to it.Henry Ward Bethany III, 2023.