Cassidy Toner

Uses humor and irony, Cassidy Toner explores themes of failure, repetition, and the absurdities embedded in contemporary life. Her work reflects on societal expectations and personal experiences, examining the pressures of performance and the tensions between success, missteps, and human vulnerability, inviting viewers to consider the complexities of everyday life. Toner works across a range of media, including ceramics, sculpture, drawing, photography, video, and text. She frequently incorporates recurring motifs and characters, transforming familiar cultural references into tools for critique and reflection. Her compositions interrogate the boundaries between the serious and the comic, inviting viewers to consider how narratives of achievement and failure shape individual and collective experience. Through her inventive use of materials and conceptual frameworks, Toner balances introspection with wit, crafting works that are simultaneously engaging, critical, and thought-provoking. Her practice emphasizes the fluidity of meaning, the interplay between narrative and form, and the potential of art to question established norms while celebrating human imperfection. ...

The Approach is co-directed by Jake Miller and Emma Robertson. Located in Bethnal Green above The Approach Tavern, for over twenty years it has operated an internationally recognised programme from its East London base. The gallery is known for discovering artists and establishing their careers as well as making inter-generational curated group shows a strong focus. The list of represented artists includes the Estates of important overlooked female artists Heidi Bucher and Maria Pinińska Bereś, as well as seminal British collage artist John Stezaker, together with established and emerging artists including Magali Reus, Peter Davies, Lisa Oppenheim, Sandra Mujinga, Pam Evelyn, Sara Cwynar, Sam Windett and Caitlin Keogh. Over the years the gallery has operated parallel programmes in additional gallery spaces in London’s West End (The Approach W1) and in Shoreditch (The Reliance). The gallery is currently based solely in its original East End location and continues to expand its programme, showcasing its represented artists in the main gallery space, and both represented and non-represented artists in The Annexe, a smaller, more experimental space at the back of the building. ...