Sim Smith: Looking Like Fire

September 20 - October 14, London, 2023

Anna Calleja, Sarah Faux, Jenna Gribbon, Kate Groobey, Norman Hyams, Lisa Ivory, Karyn Lyons, Juanita McNeely, Kemi Onabulé, Florence Peake, Lydia Pettit, Corri-Lynn Tetz

The exhibition aims to unlock a space that we are rarely allowed to enter. It relies on the vulnerability of the subject within the paintings to expose a moment, a connection to the artist who paints them. It is a place where intimate, quotidian moments and life events display powerful emotions behind a veil of freedom or privacy. The show encapsulates experience and atmosphere through observed, imagined and psychological scenes. The exhibition not only invites us to look but to shape our act of looking, with a promise of entering another realm, that of indulgence, pleasure, fear, power and fascination.

Seemingly playful forms disguise deeper meaning in Kate Groobey's paintings. The painting in this exhibition 'Our Hearts' comes from a line in her wife's debut novel. German born-Iranian writer Jina Khayyer writes that in Farsi there is no word for lesbian, because it's forbidden in Iran (and punishable by death), so instead they say 'our hearts are one'. Groobey's painting portrays her own avatar, the female stallion, with Khayyer, both reaching up in solidarity to clasp a single heart, a gesture with which they claim their freedom to love. "

6 Camberwell Passage,

London, SE5 0AX