Mixing it up

Mixing It Up: Painting Today

An exhibition of 31 artists whose works entrance, transfix and challenge us, Mixing It Up celebrates paintings that bring together diverse images and ideas.

Mixing It Up brings together 31 contemporary painters who exploit the unique characteristics of their medium to create fresh, compelling works of art that speak to this moment.

Approaching painting as a platform for speculative thinking and unexpected conversations, the artists in this exhibition make works that oscillate between observation and invention, depiction and allegory, illusion and materiality.

Lisa Brice

Born 1968, Cape Town, South Africa Lives and works between London, UK, and Port of Spain, Trinidad

In her depictions of female artists and models in studio settings, Lisa Brice reimagines paintings of women from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, liberating them from a restrictive and male-dominated art history. 'Sometimes the simple act of repainting an image of a woman previously painted by a man can be a potent shift', she observes.

Brice presents her subjects in a moment of intermission, perhaps a break between sittings. Adopting poses of ease and self-possession, they are 'performing only for themselves and one another', evoking the 'infinite possibilities embodied in these transitional states of being.

Smoke and Mirrors

2020

Ink, gesso, synthetic tempera, chalk and oil pastel and oil on canvas mounted on board

Courtesy the artist; Stephen Friedman Gallery, London; Salon 94, New York; and Goodman Gallery, South Africa

Lisa Brice

Charley

2020

Ink, synthetic tempera, pencil crayon on linen mounted on wooden panel

Courtesy the artist; Stephen Friedman Gallery, London; Salon 94, New York; and Goodman Gallery, South Africa

Lubaina Himid

Her Print on Me

2017

Acrylic on canvas

Valeria and Gregorio Napoleone collection, London

Cytoplasm

2020

Acrylic on canvas

Cranford Collection, London

Sophie von Hellermann

Tropical Island

2019

Acrylic on canvas

Courtesy the artist, Sies + Hōke,

Düsseldorf and Greene Naftali, New York

Sophie von Hellermann

Hysteria

2020

Acrylic on canvas

Courtesy the artist, Sies+ Hōke, Düsseldorf and Greene Naftali, New York

Mohammed Sami

Untitled

2019

Acrylic on canvas

Courtesy of the artist and Modern Art, London

Mohammed Sami

Refugee Camp

2020

Mixed media on canvas

Courtesy of the artist and Modern Art, London

Mohammed Sami

Infection II

2021

Mixed media on linen

Courtesy of the artist and Modern Art, London

Mohammed Sami

Family Issues II

2020

Mixed media on canvas

Courtesy of the artist and Modern Art, London

Mohammed Sami

Born 1984, Baghdad, Iraq

Lives and works in London, UK

Mohammed Sami grew up in Baghdad and his paintings draw on memories of the chaos that engulfed Iraq following the US-led invasion in 2003. The artist does not represent conflict directly, but aims instead to convey the psychological charge and trauma that lingers in its wake. Family Issues II shows a chair jammed against a door, as if barring entry against an unknown intruder. In Electric Chair I, Sami depicts a throne used by Saddam Hussein against an opaque backdrop. The ornate moulding and velvet seat create a striking contrast with the painting's sinister title - a reference to the fate met by many opponents of the dictator's regime.