Frieze London

about the artists

Nathalie Du Pasquier

b. 1957, Bordeaux, France

Frieze London - Booth G27 - Fairs - Kerlin Gallery

Nathalie Du Pasquier
Stones on shelf (left) and Swiss life (right), 2022
3 elements, oil on paper each
210 x 100 cm / 82.7 x 39.4 in total each

Influenced by the language of classicism and informed by the history of Italian art, Du Pasquier’s paintings splice together simplified still life compositions, architectural plans, industrial drawings, and playful fragments of text with boldly simplified blocks of colour. For Twice in Dublin, Du Pasquier also refers back to her own archive and accumulated experience—in particular, her time spent regularly visiting Ireland in the 2000s. Assembling elements of her work from that era alongside more recent imagery, the artist has produced a new body of work that “like everything in life, has roots and connections with previous times”.

Born in Bordeaux, France, Nathalie Du Pasquier first discovered pattern and texture in West Africa in the 1970s, and has lived in Milan since 1979. A founding member of the Memphis design group, she designed textiles, carpets, plastic laminates, furniture and objects before dedicating herself to painting in 1987. Her work has been exhibited at MACRO, Rome; MRAC, Sérignan; Palais de Tokyo, Paris; Camden Arts Centre, London; Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh; ICA, Philadelphia; Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna and, most recently, Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye in France.

Nathalie Du Pasquier
START, 2022
oil on paper, 2 modules
206.7 x 76.8 x 4.5 cm / 81.4 x 30.2 x 1.8 in framed

Aleana Egan
b. 1979, Dublin, Ireland.

Working primarily with sculpture and occasionally painting, Aleana Egan engenders psychological states and memories through enigmatic arrangements of objects and forms. Her sculptural works appear restrained yet laden with subtle references to the built environment using materials such as plaster, cardboard, matte paint and various fabrics. A meandering, sensuous line and sense of fluidity is carried from her sculptures into her painting, giving form to a sense of flux, openness and mutability. Egan’s practice is shaped by her deep engagement with works of literature and cinema: never opting for direct representation, she uses this source material as an entryway, absorbing the moods and tones it evokes. Her forms and shapes act as traces or shifting responses, tentative articulations of remembered places or everyday moments.

Aleana Egan has exhibited at Sculpture Centre, New York; Kunsthalle Basel; Kunsthalle zu Kiel; Landesmuseum Münster; The Drawing Room and Jerwood Space, London; Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge; Jupiter Artland, Edinburgh; Leeds Art Gallery; the Douglas Hyde Gallery, Temple Bar Gallery and IMMA, Dublin. She has also participated in the Berlin Biennale. In recent years, she has been the subject of solo exhibitions at Void Derry, Northern Ireland (2022); Künstlerhaus Bremen (2021); NICC Vitrine Brussels (2020) and Farbvision, Berlin (2019). Recent group exhibitions include The Classical Museum, University College Dublin (2021); Cample Line, Scotland; Temple Bar Gallery + Studios, Dublin; Scoil Lorcáin, Seapoint (all 2019); Drawing Room, London (2019, 2017) and Project Space Tilburg (2017).

Aleana Egan
hearing, cleaning, 2023
card, tape, noil, dyed cotton, papier mâché
155 x 18 x 5 cm / 61 x 7.1 x 2 in

Justin Fitzpatrick

b. 1985 Dublin, Ireland

Justin Fitzpatrick
Thynnine Wasp Pheromones, 2023
Oil on linen, oak artist frame (pinned)
143 x 93 cm / 56.3 x 36.6 in framed

Justin Fitzpatrick presents us with elaborate and fantastical paintings of mysterious figures and mutating forms; sinewy lines evoke art nouveau detailing, fused with elements of the gothic, macabre, and even body horror. In a portrait of the surrealist artist Pavel Tchelitchew, highly stylised musculoskeletal structures seem visible through the skin, while ornate, vegetal forms and insects link his subject to the earth, to burial, perhaps a resurrection of sorts.

Born in Dublin and based in France, Fitzpatrick works with sculpture and text in addition to painting. His work is informed by metaphysical poetry, mythologies and archetypes, often viewed through a lens of class and sexuality. In 2021, Fitzpatrick had his first institutional exhibition, Alpha Salad, at The Tetley, Leeds.

Callum Innes

b. 1962, Edinburgh, Scotland.

Callum Innes
Exposed Painting Lamp Black, 2023
oil on Birch Ply
110 x 108 cm / 43.3 x 42.5 in

Callum Innes creates abstract paintings that carry a powerful tension between control and fluidity. Dissolution is central to his practice: layers of deep pigments are brushed over with turpentine, breaking down sections of paint and leaving watery, trace elements, before being painted over again. Repeating this process of painting, dissolving and repainting multiple times, Innes builds depth and a sense of history: oblique panels of dense pigments become embedded and fortified, while tiny trickles or rivulets of liquified paint point to their underlying fragility. This meticulous approach to materials is carried across into the artists’ watercolours and pastels, in which pigment is built up into velveteen layers. Though Innes’ works may seem minimal or geometric at first glance, they are in fact always slightly “off kilter”, governed by imperfectly drawn lines and slightly softened shapes. This fallibility and humanity, put in contrast with the artist’s skill and precision as a painter, results in works of great poetic and contemplative power – cementing Innes’ place as one of the most significant abstract painters of his generation.

Callum Innes has been the subject of solo exhibitions at De Pont Museum, Tilburg; Kunsthalle Bern; Neues Museum, Nürnberg; Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney; the ICA, London; the Scottish National Gallery, and the Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh; Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge; Modern Art Oxford; the Whitworth, Manchester; IMMA, Dublin, and recently at Château La Coste, Provence (2018). His work can be found in the collections of Albright-Knox, Buffalo; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin; Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Texas; Museé des Beaux Arts, Lausanne; National Galleries of Australia, Canberra; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, CA; Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh; Solomon R Guggenheim Museum, New York and TATE Gallery, London.

Callum Innes
Untitled Lamp Black / Amethyst, 2023
oil on Birch Ply
110 x 110 cm / 43.3 x 43.3 in

Merlin James

b.1960, Cardiff, Wales.

Installation view
Mixing It Up: Painting Today, 2021
Hayward Gallery, South Bank Centre, London, UK

Merlin James considers the history and legacy of painting from an unconventional viewpoint. As commented by Artforum’s Sherman Sam, his work “has sought to rigorously problematise the experience of painting while simultaneously deepening its formal language”. Generally small in scale, his works depict diverse subject matter including vernacular architecture, riverside views, post-industrial landscapes, empty interiors, mysterious figures and scenes of sexual intimacy. His works refine and renew many of painting’s most time-honoured concerns – genre and narrative, pictorial space and expressive gesture, the emotive resonance of colour and texture.

Merlin James has had numerous solo exhibitions, including at Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge; Venice Biennale, Wales Pavilion; Sikkema Jenkins, New York; KW Institute, Berlin; CCA, Glasgow; Kunstverein, Freiberg; Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin; OCT, Shunde & Shenzhen; Anton Kern, New York; Philadelphia Art Alliance. Selected international collections include Tate, London; Musee d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris; Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas; Sifang Art Museum, Nanjing, China and National Museum of Wales, Cardiff.

Merlin James
House With Hoarding, 1989 (2023)
acrylic and mixed materials
118 x 122 cm / 46.5 x 48 in

Elizabeth Magill

b. 1959, Canada.

Elizabeth Magill
Headland, 2018 -2019
The New Art Gallery Walsall, UK

Described by critic Isobel Haribson as “epic, enigmatic and evocative”, Elizabeth Magill’s highly idiosyncratic paintings present subjective and psychological takes on the landscape genre. Rich with kaleidoscopic patterning and fragmented forms, these vistas are embedded in place – usually rural settings on the edges of settlements – but transported through the artist’s imagination, memories, photographs or moods to be presented as something other: lush, visionary recollections of hills, lakes, hedges and skies glowing with ambient light. The term ‘inscape’ has been used to describe Magill’s practice: landscapes not based on direct observation, but imbued with a sense of interiority and reflection. Though they have a cinematic beauty, her paintings can also be eerie or unsettling: trees or telephone wires conceal the view; birds are silhouetted in the dark; rare human figures feel distant, phantasmal; colours feel subdued, or occasionally toxic. Magill’s complex and densely layered paintings are produced using various techniques, at times incorporating stencilling, screenprinting and collage, as well as the pouring, blending, dripping, splashing and scraping away of paint. Film and photography are also central to her research, shaping the way the artist looks at landscape, and infusing her approach to light, tone and atmosphere.

Elizabeth Magill
summer lease, 2022
oil on canvas
46 x 40.7 cm / 18.1 x 16 in

Elizabeth Magill has been the subject of solo exhibitions at Arnolfini, Bristol; Bluecoat Gallery, Liverpool; PEER, London; Ikon Gallery, Birmingham; Milton Keynes Gallery; BALTIC, Gateshead; Towner Gallery, Eastbourne; Southampton City Art Gallery and Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane. Recent solo exhibitions include Kerlin Gallery (2021); Pent House, Margate (2020); New Art Gallery, Walsall; 12 Star Gallery, London (both 2019); Ulster Museum, Belfast; Matt’s Gallery, London; the Royal Hibernian Academy, Dublin (all 2018) and Limerick City Gallery of Art (2017). Her work can be found in the collections of the Tate, London; the British Museum; the National Gallery of Australia; the Irish Museum of Modern Art; Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane; the Ulster Museum; the Crawford, Cork; the Government Art Collection, London; the Arts Council of Great Britain and the Arts Council of Northern Ireland.

Elizabeth Magill
John & Yoko, 2023
oil on canvas
30 x 40 cm / 11.8 x 15.7 in

Ailbhe Ní Bhriain

b. 1978 Clare, Ireland.

Ailbhe Ní Bhriain
manifesto of fragility, 2022
16th Lyon Biennale
Curated by Sam Bardaouil & Till Fellrath
Photo: François Deladerrière

Ailbhe Ní Bhriain is an Irish artist working with film, computer generated imagery, collage, tapestry, print and installation. Ní Bhriain’s work is rooted in an exploration of imperial legacy, human displacement and the Anthropocene. These intertwined subjects are approached through an associative use of narrative and a painstakingly crafted visual language that verges on the surreal. She sidesteps directive positions and familiar binaries, exposing instead the layers of ambiguity and contradiction embedded in these fraught issues. The resulting worlds she creates are at once idiosyncratic, irresistible and deeply unsettling. Her work has been exhibited widely both nationally and internationally and regularly involves collaboration with musicians and composers.

Ailbhe Ní Bhriain studied at the Crawford College of Art & Design, Cork, the Royal College of Art, London and Kingston University, London, where she was awarded a PhD by practice in 2008. Her work has been shown widely internationally, with exhibitions including Temple Bar Gallery, Dublin; Broad Museum, Michigan; Whitechapel Gallery, London; CCA, Glasgow; Hammer Museum, LA; Istanbul Modern, Turkey; Reina Sofia Museum, Madrid and the 16th Lyon Biennale. Ní Bhriain will present her first solo exhibition at Kerlin Gallery in November 2023.

Ailbhe Ní Bhriain
Interval VI, 2023
cotton, wool, silk, Lurex
edition of 3 + 2AP
294.5 x 408 cm / 115.9 x 160.6 in

Booth G27

11–15 October 2023

Selected Works

Installation Views