Tender Communions locates intimacy as a cardinal site of harmony and entropy. Imbued in each artist’s work is a pervasive right to opacity, a vivification of an individual and collective ability to pull the proverbial strings on that (or the parts of self) which are concealed and revealed. In these dynamic enactments of vulnerability and holistic imagination, radical intimacy exists between identity and auto-histories, ancestral and contemporary realms, corporality and the ethereal, the quotidian and the speculative. These optic, multimedia ritualisations are concurrently figurative, penumbral, monochrome and regally adorned.
Temitope Adebowale is a British-Nigerian artist and graphic designer. Her portraits re- present and layer past memories, woven with personal reflections. Finding sufficiency in the minimal and mundane, she's inspired to discover the abundance therein, challenging herself to work with what she’s got and tell stories though materials. The resultant works teeter on the borders of past and present, present and absent, 2D and 3D, among others.Her greyscale paintings harmonise found images with found objects, resisting the overstimulation of the present day.
Adebowale uses art-making to visually vocalise the inner murmurings of the subconscious, confronting realities and creating alternative ones. Recent exhibitions include the Aesthetica Art Prize at York Art Gallery, "ArtWorks Open 2023" at the Barbican Arts Group Trust and the ING Discerning Eye exhibition at Mall Galleries.
Kwamé Azure Gomez is a Chicago - based painter and writer. Through a myriad of material investigations, Gomez canvasses the personal customs of everyday life. Reflecting on Black interiors as a repository of imagination, they consider Black rituals of rest, autonomy, affirmation, memory and processing to be vessels for sentimental connection. In their multimedia practice, Gomez explores the Black interior's existence beyond a physical body - as rememory, a feeling, an ideology and intuition. Through intimate gestures and dreamlike structures, communion takes shape. In 2021 they received their Bachelors of Fine arts from the Myers School of Art located in Akron, OH. In Spring of 2023 they obtained their Masters of Fine Arts in Studio at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Gomez received the Emerging Artist grant from New American Paintings in 2022, and is currently featured in the 2023 New American Paintings MFA Issue 165. Their work has been exhibited at New Image Art Gallery in Los Angeles, CA; SoLA Contemporary in Los Angeles, CA; Stony Island Arts Bank in Chicago, IL; Anthony Gallery in Chicago, IL and Cierra Britton Gallery in New York.
Working in the zone between still life and imagined space, Luke Francis Austin employs painting and drawing to probe themes of ego-formation, desire and interpersonal relations. Informed by still life, collage and Jungian/ Lacanian Psychoanalysis, Austin builds scenes of contemplation which challenge and dialogically position artifice and honesty. Crafting window guards and theatre stages, manipulating light and collaging images derived from mythology to pornography, Austin schemes opaque narratives and solipsistic reflections of the human condition. Austin’s work conveys the emotional dispositions of living in a society where the language of the heart is not ubiquitous. The Brooklyn-based artist hails from San Bernardino County, CA and studied studio art at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo. Austin’s work has been exhibited with Anonymous Gallery in New York and in the Brooklyn Museum through the Black Art Sessions, facilitated by Eboni Haynes and Cassandra Press.
Osione Itegboje is a UK- based artist known for his expressive work in drawing, painting, sound, film and graphic design. Itegboje explores intimacy through intersections of space, conversation and technology. His work has been featured in exhibitions in Lagos, Hamburg and Accra. He is a founding member of the creative collective, hFACTOR, and cofounder of the homegrown fashion and life-style brand, THIS IS US Nigeria.
London-based artist Precious Opara’s practice stands as a witness account of the apophenic parallels between internal emotions and the natural world. Drawing on art historical and personal references, Opara weaves a tapestry of emotions together, materialising a natural landscape to form a visual chronicle. Her work acts as a conduit for shared experiences and universal sentiments - a melding of sights observed into something which transcends the boundaries of the seemingly inanimate and the singular body. Her figurative compositions demonstrate a distinctive surrealist style, centering the self-portrait and akin molecular makeups of both human and water bodies. Rarely do her figures meet our gaze - Opara's canvas is a sanctified space with deliberate anonymity.
Recent artistic residencies in Tuscany (Villa Lena, 2022) and Giessenburg (Clovermill, 2022) have steered Opara toward the narrative potential of water - sparking introspective discourse on sensory dissolution and emotional immersion in the natural realm. Opara gives sentience to these natural elements, endowing them with the agency to interact as emotions do: enveloping, caressing and swallowing the figure. Opara has recently exhibited in FEMME F(R)ICTION with C1760 in New York.
Kofi Perry is an American-Iranian contemporary painter. Using historical methods, his tonal works are embodiments of Afro-futuristic excogitation and anthropological subversion. He studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia, and completed his BFA Hons at City and Guilds of London Art School in 2022. His debut institutional solo exhibition “Remnants From the Distant Future” opened in 2024 at the Lightbox Gallery in Woking, UK. Recent selected group exhibitions include the Ingram Prize, Cromwell Place, London (2023) and D Contemporary, London (2023). He is the recipient of the Charles Toppan Prize (2020), the Baton Fine Art Prize (2022) and the Ingram Prize (2023).
Cameron Ugbodu, aka "See You", is an autodidact Nigerian-Austrian artist living and working in London. Through their multidisciplinary work, Ugbodu investigates family histories, identity and queerness. Influences and techniques learned from their family's heritage from Benin City (Edo State, Nigeria) and the Wachau area (Austria) shape Ugbodu’s practice. Craftsmanship has always been an important part of Ugbodu's family - this, coupled with difficulty in verbal self- expression, has led Ugbodu to reconnoiter visual means of communicating their world to others. In a constant state of exploration, their work archives different stages of their experience and the space surrounding them with a gaze towards the future. Ugbodu has exhibited and collaborated with institutions including SMO Gallery, The Victoria and Albert Museum of London, University of Applied Arts Vienna, SECCA North Carolina, Cubitt Artists London, Flat 70, Never at Home Vienna, BID Hammersmith, Dada Gallery, Photo London, Saatchi Gallery and PRIM.
Image: (detail) Kofi Perry, 'Crown of Mirrors', 2024, courtesy of DADA Gallery.
