Aileen Murphy

In her distinctive approach to painting, Murphy generates imagery through a combination of slow layering and fast applications of oil paint, animating a delicate urgency and sparking sensations of both epiphany and discomfort. Fictive characters are the focal points of Murphy’s paintings. The figures fluctuate under the viewer’s eye, revealing and concealing themselves behind and via the materiality of the medium. The paintings have evolved through Murphy’s experimental exploration of paint. In her hands, painting is an act of imaginative action—colour and gesture are live wires. The images committed to canvas arrive there through an ongoing process of reinvention. A true identity is revealed only to then conceal itself and re-emerge as something other but no less true. ...

Amanda Wilkinson opened her gallery in November 2017, having been a partner in Wilkinson Gallery, and brought with her the artists that she had worked with since 2003. Most of these internationally renowned artists had their first solo UK exhibition at the gallery: Joan Jonas and Shimabuku in 2004, Sung Hwan Kim in 2007, Jimmy DeSana in 2009, and Laurie Simmons in 2011. The program has also introduced younger artists such as Heman Chong, Phoebe Unwin, Dorota Gawęda and Eglė Kulbokaitė all of whom have solo exhibitions in public institutions this year. Amanda Wilkinson is a trustee of the Derek Jarman Estate and is the sole gallery who represents the work. The program continues to highlight key historical artists who are little known to the wider art world, including Paolo Gioli, Ketty La Rocca and Margaret Raspé and will introduce new artists to the program in 2020 in keeping with the gallery’s experimental and cross-generational approach. The gallery has presented four Feature booths at ArtBasel in the past , featuring six artists from the program. Eight out of the twelve artists represented by the gallery had solo museum exhibitions in 2019/2020. ...