First Thursday Late Opening

Final late opening of the Bow Open Show, celebrated with special cocktails and snacks on offer from next door Carmelite Cafe. The exhibition is the only show in the Nunnery Gallery’s programme to showcase exclusively Bow Arts artists, celebrating the innovation and creativity of the artists and makers working in the charity’s creative workspaces.
This year’s exhibition, selected by painter Anj Smith (Hauser & Wirth) is a collective of 24 Bow Arts artists with media ranging from paint, collage and drawing to photography, interactive sculpture and performance. Inviting a guest curator to make the exhibition selection builds a unique and different view point each year; previous curators include Mark Wallinger and Bob and Roberta Smith with Skye Sherwin.
Arresting visually, the works are also potent in meaning, with artists exploring themes including gender, identity and disparate family history. Thick and expressive paint quietly presents female eroticism in Anna Ilsley’s Call me, Call me Any, Anytime, while Ryan Hodge’s Ladies and Gentlemen takes us through an investigative comic strip of gender identity: pencil drawn self-portraits illuminated with screams of bright pink hair and make-up. Faces swell and bristle with brush-strokes in Jaime Valtierra’s Not Always but Anytime which, in his own words, “looks to explore sexuality against a background of polarising emotions such as failure, empowerment, repression, sublimation or abjection”.
Exhibiting artists: Michael Achtman; Nitin Amin; Marta Bakst; Victoria Burgher; Lizzie Cannon; Jessica Jane Charleston; Matt Gee; Michael Gurhy; Rachel Haines; Denise Hickey; Ryan Hodge; Anna Ilsley; Matthew Krishanu; Felicity McCabe; Lauren Mele; Laura Napier; Ellie Nicholls; Marcus Orlandi; Mette Sterre; Rhys Thomas; Emily Tracy; Jaime Valtierra; Emily Whitebread; Emily Wolfe
To RSVP please follow this link! Remember this event is FREE. We can’t wait to see you there!