Regions: Wilhelmina Barns-Graham, Magda Blasinska, Steven Claydon, Ken Kiff, Haroun Hayward, Rob Lyon, Kentaro Okumura, PIC, Laetitia Yhap

 

Hales is delighted to announce Regions, a group show featuring works by Wilhelmina Barns-Graham, Magda Blasinska, Steven Claydon, Ken Kiff, Haroun Hayward, Rob Lyon, Kentaro Okumura, PIC and Laetitia Yhap. Regions explores place as experienced in regions of the mind - focusing on transformation, mental landscapes, and artistic invention.  

 

Drawing on psychological connections to place, Regions delves into how the external world is internalized and transformed, from taking root in the artist's mind and lingering in a pupal stage to emerging as fully realized artworks. In their cerebral gestation period, images of the world are subjected to the mind's eye - emotion, belief systems, memory, and histories. The exhibition ventures into this intangible realm, which is beyond physical restraints and where artworks are part of the artist's psyche. Regions brings together contemporary practitioners with the estates of Wilhelmina Barns-Graham, Ken Kiff and PIC, showcasing how this cross-generational group of UK based artists examine different qualities of the natural world.  

 

Barns-Graham's paintings convey her experience of nature and the motion of wind through an energetic abstraction - visualising natural phenomena is a theme explored throughout her oeuvre. Blasinska applies a formal rigour to large- and small-scale paintings, which draw on her memories of a post-Soviet upbringing in rural Poland and her present experience of living in the UK. Okumura's evocative abstract paintings are made through initial observations and an osmosis of memory, alluding to architectural elements in layered works. PIC (the artist pseudonym of Charles Higgins) creates a miniature world on a razor blade box in poetic, imagined scenes. In Kiff's pursuit of an arresting image, he imbues symbolic values to recognisable motifs from the natural world - the sun, a hill, a tree. In detailed paintings, Claydon invokes the topographic and a spatial interplay with intersecting lines and insects that are reminiscent of a Dutch still life. Lyon considers how we participate in the landscape through a visual lexicon of mark making and motifs, composing paintings from repeating dots, dashes and triangles. In Yhap's watercolour still life, she foregrounds tumbling cherries with a backdrop of the beach, in a diamond composition echoing her paintings made on unusually shaped panels. Hayward's sensitive watercolour explores the transformative quality of changing light on an environment. In distinct visual languages, the works in this show have restrained colour palettes and deeply rich surfaces, which highlight the transformative nature of artmaking. 

 

Wilhelmina Barns-Graham (b. 1912 St Andrews, Scotland - d. 2004 St Andrews, Scotland) was a pioneer of post-war British abstraction and a prominent member of the St Ives group.  She is represented in many collections, including Tate, UK; The British Museum, London; V&A Museum, London; the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh; and the New South Wales Art Gallery, Australia. Recent exhibitions include a solo display of drawings at the British Museum (2024), a large-scale solo exhibition at the Hatton Gallery, Newcastle upon Tyne (2023) and a duo show at Tate St Ives (2022). An award-winning documentary on the work and imagination of Barns-Graham was released in 2024.  

 

Magda Blasinska (b. 1983 Ilza, Poland) lives and works in London. She studied an MA Painting from Royal College of Art (2018) and a BA in Drawing and Painting from Edinburgh College or Art (2009). Recent exhibitions include solo exhibition, Owl Mountain, Castor Gallery, London (2024); group exhibition, Bread, OHSH Projects, London (2024); and solo Cinnamon Shops, Govan Project Space, Glasgow (2023).  

 

Steven Claydon (b. 1969, London, UK) is an artist and musician. He studied at Chelsea School of Art and Design and Central Saint Martins, London. His work has been in many group exhibitions including recent shows at Tate Liverpool, UK; Nottingham Contemporary, UK; RAMM, UK; The Glucksman, Cork, Ireland; and The Holbourne Museum, Bath. Claydon's work is held in many public collections including Tate, London; Saatchi Gallery, London; Southampton City Art Gallery; The Hepworth Wakefield; Rennie Collection, Vancouver; Haus der Kunst, Münich; Pinakothek der Moderne, Münich; Faye G. Allen Center for the Arts, Seattle; and Henry Art Gallery, University of Washington, Seattle. 

 

PIC (Charles Higgins) (b. 1893 Buenos Aires - d. 1980 London) was injured serving in WWI during the Gallipoli campaign. In the 1920s he relocated to Britain where he devoted his life to painting.  He built a cottage on the Island of Barra in the Outer Hebrides and divided his time between there and his studio in St Johns Wood, London. His work is in the collections of the Leicester Museum and Galleries, Dartington Hall, Totnes and the John Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, including others. His work was exhibited in important British galleries during his lifetime, including the Wertheim Gallery during the 1930s, Gimpel Fils during the 1940s and 50s and Jack Bilbo's The Modern Art Gallery in the 1940s. 

  

Ken Kiff RA (b. 1935, Dagenham, Essex - d. 2001, London, UK) is a celebrated British artist known for his visionary and distinct painting practice. He trained at the Hornsey School of Art (1955-61) and went on to teach at Chelsea School of Art and the Royal College of Art, where over thirty years he influenced generations of artists. Kiff had important solo exhibitions at the Royal Academy of Arts, London; The National Gallery, London; Talbot Rice Art Centre, Edinburgh; Serpentine Gallery, London; and Arnolfini Gallery, Bristol. He was included in the artist and curator Timothy Hyman's seminal touring exhibition Narrative Paintings in 1979. Recently The Sequence was the focus of a major solo exhibition at the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, Norwich (2018-2019). Kiff's first solo exhibition at Hales will open in London in April 2025. 

 

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 has had solo exhibitions at Hales New York; Hales London; Entractes23, Arles; indigo+madder, London and Wellington Club, London. He has been included in group exhibitions at Modern Art, London; Marlborough Art Gallery, London; Public Gallery, London; French Riviera, London; Galerie Isa, Mumbai, India; Paradise Row Projects, London; among others.His work is included in the collections of the Gujral Foundation, India; Kiran Nadar Collection, India and Arun Nayar Collection, UK among others. 

 

Rob Lyon (b. 1982 Lancashire, UK) lives and works in Sussex, UK. He has a Bachelor of Science in Chemistry and Law from Bristol University, UK. Lyon has had exhibitions at Hales, London, UK; Warwick Arts Center, UK; Alzueta Gallery, Barcelona Spain; Adams and Ollman, Portland, Oregon, USA: Wondering People, London, UK; Gallery 94, Glyndebourne, UK; Blakefest 2020 and 2017, Bognor Regis, UK; and the Warbling Collective, London, UK. 

 

Kentaro Okumura (b. 2002 Hong Kong) is a Japanese artist based in London. He graduated from Camberwell College of Art in 2024. Recent and forthcoming solo exhibitions include Kentaro Okumura, Vardaxoglou Gallery, London, UK (2025); Rawness, Chapter 6, Shanghai, China (2024). Recent group exhibitions include On Feeling, The Approach, London, UK (2024); Hiraeth, Filet Space, London, UK (2024); Contingency Part 1, Des Bains, London, UK (2023). 

 

Laetitia Yhap (b. 1941 London, UK) graduated from Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts in 1962. In 1965, she gained her postgraduate degree from the Slade School of Fine Art. Yhap lives and works in Hastings, UK. Yhap's solo exhibitions include shows at De La Warr Pavilion; Hastings Museum and Art Gallery, Hastings; Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle-upon-Tyne; Berwick Museum and Art Gallery; Camden Art Centre, London; Yanlan Arts and Culture Foundation, Beijing, among others.  Yhap's work can be found in many collections including Tate, UK; Arts Council of Great Britain, UK and Hastings Museum and Art Gallery, UK, amongst many.