Frieze London | Booth A5: Andrew Bick, Tessa Boffin, Martyn Cross, Chitra Ganesh, Haroun Hayward, John Hoyland, Hew Locke, Tuli Mekondjo, Lucy Stein, Kay WalkingStick, Gray Wielebinski, Laetitia Yhap

Andrew Bick (b. 1963, Gloucestershire, UK) received an MA in painting from the Chelsea School of Art and has since shown extensively in Europe and the US. Bick's works play with elements of flat colour, depth and surface, revealing the process of painting as a series of strategies or components within the visual puzzle of the whole. Bick's paintings call into question false opposites, and contrast hard geometric or blunt graphic forms with uncertain or dashed-out strokes or patches of scrubbed brushwork. Within the abstract geometry of his works, he combines matte and glossy surfaces, different textures, colour and 'non-colour'. Bick's work has most recently been acquired by the Sainsbury Centre, UK and other works by Bick can be found in many prestigious collections including Victoria & Albert Museum, UK; British Museum, UK and New York Public Library, USA amongst others.  

Tessa Boffin (b.1960 - d. 1993 London, UK) gained a BA (Hons) Degree in Photographic Arts (Theory and Practice) from Polytechnic of Central London (now University of Westminster) in 1986 and an MA in Critical Theory from University of Sussex, UK. Boffin was a pioneering artist and a key organising figure in the UK's photography scene, working between the mid-1980s to the early 1990s. Despite a brief oeuvre, Boffin developed a complex body of photographic work which explored gender, sex positivity and societal and political issues referring to AIDS. In staged scenes Boffin championed lesbian visibility and the actualization of queer identity through explorations of fantasy. 

Martyn Cross  (b. 1975, Yate, UK) lives and works in Bristol, UK. Cross is primarily a painter, creating works that speak to ancient and mythic lands. Applying thin layers of dry-brush pigment, the paintings are reminiscent of unearthed artefacts. Drawing on a myriad of concepts from mythology and the medieval, Cross' works personify the landscape. Figures, eyes and solitary limbs emerge from clouds and rivers, speaking to an alternate fiction. Ambiguous narratives are formed in reoccurring scenes and motifs, creating an immersive world. In 2022, Cross had a solo exhibition at Hales London, and Marianne Boesky Gallery, NY. Currently on view is Cross' first solo institutional exhibition at Flatland Projects, Bexhill on Sea, UK, and his work is also featured in the John Moores Painting Prize exhibition at the Walker Art Gallery, for which he has been shortlisted. 

Chitra Ganesh  (b. 1975 Brooklyn, NY, USA) received a BA from Brown University, Providence, RI in 1996 and an MFA from Columbia University, NY in 2002. She lives and works in Brooklyn, NY, USA. Interweaving disparate visual idioms, mythic and speculative narratives, Ganesh's extensive explorations invite viewers to consider alternate narratives of sexuality and power. In detailed works, Ganesh combines a vast array of influences including South Asian iconography, science fiction and queer theory, with the visual languages of vintage comics, Bollywood posters, and video games. Ganesh's solo show at the Clifford Gallery, Colgate University, NY, USA opened in September 2023. 

Haroun Hayward  (b. 1983, London, UK) received a BA (Hons) in Fine Art Painting from University of Brighton and an MA in Fine Art Practice from Goldsmiths University, London. Hayward's paintings are a celebration of hybridity, harmoniously converging art historical and musical references with distinct modes of making. The paintings honour what informs Hayward's personal and artistic narrative - rave culture, abstract expressionism, post war British landscape painting and his mother's textile collection. Repetition and remixing, to borrow from music terminology, are key to the artist's painting process. Hayward's debut solo exhibition at Hales London opened in 2023. His work is included in the collections of the Gujral Foundation, India; Kiran Nadar Collection, India and Arun Nayar Collection, UK among others. 

John Hoyland RA  (b.1934 Sheffield, UK - d.2011 London, UK) was one of the most inventive and dynamic abstract painters of the post-war period. Over the span of more than a half-century his art and attitudes constantly evolved. A distinctive artistic personality emerged, concerned with colour, painterly drama, with both excess and control, with grandeur and above all, with the vehement communication of feeling. Hoyland's recent solo retrospective Doors of Perception: The Paintings of John Hoyland, was on view through at Daugavpils Mark Rotko Art Centre, Latvia. Hoyland's work in included in many prestigious collections including the Royal Academy of Arts, UK; Tate, UK; Arts Council Collection, UK; Museum of Modern Art, NY, USA and Yale Centre for British Art, New Haven, CT amongst many. 

Hew Locke RA OBE  (b. Edinburgh, UK, 1959) spent his formative years (1966-80) in Guyana before returning to the UK to complete an MA in sculpture at the Royal College of Art (1994) and was elected a member of the Royal Academy of Arts in 2022. Locke explores the languages of colonial and post-colonial power, how different cultures fashion their identities through visual symbols of authority, and how these representations are altered by the passage of time. These explorations have led Locke to a wide range of subject matters, imagery and media, assembling sources across time and space in his deeply layered artworks. In 2022/3, Locke's breath-taking Duveen Galleries commission The Procession was on view at Tate Britain, London and the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead, UK. The artist's work Gilt, for the Met Museum Façade Commission was on view through May 2023 in NY, USA. 

Tuli Mekondjo  (b.1982 Angola) is a Namibian artist, whose richly multifaceted practice considers the sociohistorical context of Namibia as a site to re-evaluate and consider ideas around ancestry and identity. Mekondjo lives and works in Windhoek, Namibia. Known for her mixed media and embroidered paintings, Mekondjo's rigorous practice is a pursuit to connect with and honour her heritage. Her practice navigates feelings of displacement, having spent her childhood in refugee camps. Sensitive explorations of history and ancestry allow Mekondjo to address, question, and heal parts of this past, deftly weaving personal and collective trauma with beauty, nature and optimism. Mekondjo was a finalist for The Norval Sovereign African Art Prize 2023, and recipient of the prestigious DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program in 2022. 

Lucy Stein  (b.1979, Oxford, UK) lives and works in St Just, West Cornwall, UK. Stein studied at The Glasgow School of Art, and De Ateliers, in Amsterdam. Her recent solo exhibition Wet Room toured from Spike Island, Bristol to De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill UK (2021/22). Her work has been shown at Futura, Prague, Czech Republic (2020); Bonington Gallery, Nottingham, UK (2019); Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge; Tate St Ives, UK (both 2018); NICC Brussels; TULCA festival, Galway; Newlyn Gallery, Penzance, UK (all 2017); Migros Museum, Zurich (2014); Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam; and ICA London (both 2006). Lucy Stein's first solo exhibition with the gallery will open at Hales London in November this year.

Kay WalkingStick  (b. 1935 Syracuse, NY) is a citizen of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, she has Cherokee/Anglo heritage. She received a BFA from Beaver College (now Arcadia University) Glenside, PA in 1959 and an MFA from the Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, NY in 1975. She lives and works in Pennsylvania. Over a career spanning six decades, WalkingStick's practice has focused on the American Landscape and its metaphorical significances to Native Americans and people across the world. WalkingStick draws on formal modernist painterly traditions as well as the Native American experience to create works that connect the immediacy of the physical world with the spiritual. The Museum of Modern Art, NY, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, AR and The New-York Historical Society, NY have recently acquired works by WalkingStick.

Gray Wielebinski  (b. 1991 Dallas, TX, USA) received a BA from Pomona College, Claremont CA, USA in 2014 before completing an MFA from the Slade School of Fine Art, London, UK in 2018. He lives and works in both London, UK and Los Angeles, CA, USA. In Wielebinski's expansive practice, incorporating video, performance, collage, installation, sculpture, and more, he explores the intersections of mythology, identity, gender, nationhood, and memory. Reconfiguring and transforming iconography and visual codes, his work seeks to navigate and question society's frameworks and belief systems, exploring private and public spaces. Wielebinski deftly confronts realities in order to imagine and propose alternatives. Wielebinski's work Exhibition is currently on view for the Art Block Commission at Selfridges, London. His first solo institutional exhibition, Gray Wielebinski: The Red Sun is High, the Blue Low opened at the ICA, London in September 2023. 

Laetitia Yhap  (b. 1941 London, UK) graduated from Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts in 1962. Following her graduation, and, through the support of the Leverhulme Research Scholarship, she travelled to Italy for a year to research Renaissance art and architecture. In 1965, she gained her postgraduate degree from the Slade School of Fine Art. Yhap lives and works in Hastings, UK. Yhap is best known for intricate paintings of fishermen on the beaches of Hastings created on unusually shaped panels individually hand-made by Yhap for each work. Born in England during the Second World War, Yhap has Austrian and Chinese heritage, which, according to her, throughout her life created a feeling that she didn't belong. Finding solace in art making and, later, in the Hastings fishing community, she has forged a unique and important voice within British art history. Yhap's work can be found in many renowned collections including Tate,UK; Arts Council of Great Britain,UK and  Hastings Museum and Art Gallery, UK, amongst many. Her first solo show with the gallery was on view at Hales London in September.