This month we asked Petra Cortright to select her favourite artists from AucArt. Nine of our most promising artists showcase their work in a range of mediums from works on paper to canvas.
Lucy is a contemporary visual artist whose subtle compositions explore the body’s delicacy and resilience. At the age of 15 Lucy underwent total reconstruction and fusion of the spine which, although not disabling, has influenced many aspects of her life. This, as well as the complicated medical climate, continues to spur her interest with health and its exploration through art.
A Charm, A Single Charm Is Doubtful, 2017
122 x 153 cm
Acrylic on canvas
£2,700
I was attracted to this because of the composition and I love the domestic space it evokes. The subtleness of the figure is very beautiful.
B is a contemporary artist whose practice closely orbits themes of memory, identity and time. Her recent works confront the unreliability of memory and transfiguration, induced by nostalgia and often characterised by her gestural abstractions.
I was drawn to a lot of pieces by this artist and decided on this one. Whilst it’s an abstract selection, I think the movement and mood stir up something floral and wonderful. I’m a big fan.
Garage Sale Money for Sushi, 2020
41 x 51 cm
Oil on panel
£700
Mateusz is a Polish-German artist whose practice confronts ideas of memory, space, and deconstruction. His work combines architectural and natural forms, inspired by the concept of hyperreality. He continually explores the use of materiality, light, and technology through his practice.
Planting Fruits, 2019
150 x 112 cm
Oil and acrylic on canvas
£3,600
This has the floral “mood” that I spoke of. Very fun and playful.
Khaleb is a multi-disciplinary artist and researcher exploring blackness, transness and collective memory. Through painting, performance and video, his latest works blur the lines between history and future in an attempt to explore the possibilities inherent in liminal spaces. A liminal space is in between worlds, dislocation, without rights, non- being. By meshing the black queer figure with surreal environments in paintings and entering transcendental states in performance, he forces his audience to confront the literal and social death of black trans people globally.
This is a stunning piece, it’s haunting and seductive. A mermaid on a bed is “flowers”, I don’t care if anyone says otherwise. Also the wallpaper pattern is floral-esque so there you go.
Tryna Make a Way Out of No Way, 2020
153 x 107 cm
Acrylic on canvas
£1,200
Oriele is a British painter whose work involves a wide array of techniques and processes. She uses colour and light as her principal means of experimentation and is particularly interested in the evocation of emotion through colour. Her works often comprise vivid dreamscapes inhabited by figures drawn from photography and the imagination.
Snappy Club, 2019
21 x 30 cm
Oil pastel on paper
£400
This is like Outsider art meets Matisse and I hold both those things very dear, so I was drawn to this.
Sarah is a contemporary visual artist who explores the way in which organic patterns and textures resonate through the use of oil paint and natural pigments. She investigates both the presence of the flora and foliage that can be found within a landscape – as well as how the plants that inhabit these scenes can describe the habitats they are a part of.
This is my favourite piece – it’s enchanting. You can sit with it for a while and it unfolds in a lovely way. A lot of times my judgement for art is, would I hang this in my home? The answer on this is yes, yes, yes.
Twilight Zone 2019
50 x 40 cm
Oil on canvas
£950
Yulia is a London-based artist whose large-scale works draw inspiration from children’s illustration, fashion and theatre to posit fragmentary narratives. An initial readability in her work is thrown into question by the persistent use of techniques which serve to interrupt the image and break down earlier impressions of visual plenitude. Yulia’s recent body of works explore the artist’s own deployment of burlesque, the grotesque, irony and humour in images.
Office Gossip, 2019
120 x 95 cm
Oil on transparent fabric
£2,800
Another Matisse vibe, but hey there is nothing bad about being compared to a great artist! The movement and colour is gorgeous. I also really enjoyed her other works as well, the birds are brilliant and I almost chose one of those instead of this, anything would have worked with my theme, she has a lovely style.
Agata is a recently graduated artist whose practice explores contemporary theories of visual language fed by social-contemporary dynamics. Every brand, marketing action or story on instagram is an element of study and a possible creation tool like a pencil on a sheet of paper. Agata materialises this theory through her recent paintings, videos and new media with differing works revolving around unconventional methods exploiting the same research object “contemporaneity”.
The palm trees are flowering outside of my studio window as I type this on the edge of Los Angeles. I have a serious affection for palm tree art. The cell phone suggestion is chic. It’s dreamy and a little bit doomy and that balance keeps it from being saccharine.
Natural Celltower (SARIBUS), 2019
70 x 50 cm
Acrylic on canvas
£1,550
Ala is a contemporary Iranian artist who was born 3 years after the Iranian Revolution and 1 year after the onset of the Iran-Iraq War. The inspiration for her work comes from her personal experiences, often exploring the relationship between place, memory, and dislocation in relation to the emotional and affective investments they provoke and generate.
The Traces of Leaves, 2019
100 x 165 cm
Oil on canvas
£2,400
This piece is so elegant. This was another artist where a number of works could have been selected – the way she works with rooms and dimensions is lovely and the color palette is opulent.
