The smallest gallery in the UK exhibits at Saatchi Gallery with 'Entangled'

Liminal Gallery is delighted to present Entangled at Saatchi Gallery, running from 29 March to 11 May 2025. This multidisciplinary exhibition features painting, drawing, ceramics and sculpture by nine contemporary artists, offering nuanced reflections on the human condition and our inextricable relationship with the natural world. 

 

Through their diverse practices, the artists explore the entanglements between humanity and the environment, addressing themes of interconnectedness, vulnerability, spirituality and coexistence. Their works challenge human exceptionalism, to confront the shared complexities of life and the delicate balance between human desires and ecological realities. 

 

Entangled examines the ways in which our lived experiences—shaped by culture, history, and emotion—intersect with the broader biosphere. By engaging with questions of responsibility, belonging, and the passage of time, the exhibition reveals the intricate ties that bind us to one another and to the ecosystems we inhabit. 

 

This exhibition brings together a group of nine artists from Liminal Gallery’s roster, whose perspectives transform familiar narratives of nature and the human experience. The works in Entangled highlight the fragile connections that sustain life on Earth.

 

Henrietta Armstrong 

 

Henrietta Armstrong is a multimedia artist and curator based in London, specialising in sculpture, installation and public art. She looks at man-made objects and structures from everyday technologies that are often obsolete or defunct, and the symbolism or meaning that we imbue them with. Her most recent work continues her exploration of themes related to personal relics, the mystical unknown and ritualistic practices. Considering the hypocrisy between the Catholic Church's veneration of relics and its historical condemnation of witchcraft. While relics, often mass-produced religious items with supposed divine significance, are celebrated and revered, the Church's stance on witchcraft has been one of persecution and condemnation. This contrast adds an intriguing layer to Armstrong's exploration of religious artefacts and their cultural symbolism, urging viewers to reflect on the complex dynamics of the symbols, rituals and shifting perceptions that shape human belief systems. Through her work, she encourages us to confront the incongruities within our societal norms, inviting us to question the malleable boundaries between the sacred and the condemned. 

 

Armstrong was selected as a finalist for the National Sculpture Prize 2021 and awarded as a runner up for the Soho House Art Prize 2020/2021, where she created an exclusive print edition for Soho Home. She has recently completed a public sculpture commission for the village of Tytherington commissioned by Cotswold Homes & South Gloucestershire Council. 

 

Henrietta Armstrong BA Fine Art (Hons) at Sir John Cass School of Art, London, graduating in 2003. Recent exhibitions include Tideline at Messums Wiltshire, ‘I Took my Power in My Hand’ at Liminal Gallery, Margate. National Sculpture Prize Summer Exhibition at Broomhill Estate, TILT Summer Show at Hoxton Gallery, Art on a Postcard Summer Auction 2021 and Recreational Grounds: Off Site at Thames-Side Gallery. Her work is part of the Soho House permanent collection and is held in private collections around the world.

 

 

Anna Blom 

 

Anna Blom is a Swedish-born, London-based artist who holds an MA in Painting (Arts and Humanities) from the Royal College of Art (2022) and a BFA in Painting from UAL Wimbledon (2020). Blom’s practice contemplates the diaristic, each piece acting as a response to her environment and emotional state at any given moment. Her semi-abstract paintings, which she describes as “observational portraits”, contain traces of her continuous research; an archival process of investigating how individuals connect, combine and construct themselves through collecting objects, matter, white noise and writing. Drawing on this material, the artist deconstructs the fragile details of daily life in each piece, allowing transient forms to allude to the physical and psychological components of her lived experience. Her works also act as records of the environment in which they were created - Blom lays the unstretched canvas out in the open, exposed to the elements, and paints with raw pigment while allowing situational debris to fall upon the surface. The resultant textured, gritty and matt surfaces speak to the moment they were created, reflecting seasonality, weather conditions, and the artist's shifting emotional landscape. Deliberately ephemeral, her paintings tell personal stories and share fragments of a “painted philosophy”; a way of manifesting the complexity of human experience as an emotionally rich, transient and vulnerable state. 

 

Blom's work has been featured in group exhibitions by galleries and curatorial projects including Apsara Studio (2024) Vortic, London (2024); Studio West, London (2024); Gertrude and Canopy Collections, London (2024); Flowers Gallery, London (2023); Hautes Côtes, Apsara Studio and Sotheby's, Burgundy (2023); Liminal Gallery, Margate (2023); OHSH Projects, London (2023); Aora and Apsara Studio, London (2023); Ovada Gallery, Oxford (2023) and Orleans House Gallery, London (2022) among others. The research is an archival process of collecting photographs, sketches, white noise and writing which ultimately is poured into a painting. The multiple layers on the canvas are built up with stains of thin washes using raw pigment and permitting situational debris to flow in. This creates textured, gritty, matt surfaces allowing the materials to explore each other, the colours indicating seasonality, and the debris enhancing an awareness of place of production. The making itself becomes a memory of time and place. Anna Blom is a Swedish born, London-based artist who holds an MA in Painting from the Royal College of Art (2022) and a BFA in Painting from UAL Wimbledon (2020). She has curated, led and exhibited across Europe and UK. Recent exhibitions include LUMA Aora & Apsara Gallery, International Women’s Day Auction with Liminal Gallery and ANNIHILATION OHSH Projects. She is a recipient of 2022/2023 Travers Smith Art Programme, Morrison Foerster Art Programme and been Highly Commended in 2023 CSR Art Awards. 

 

Blom divides her studio practice between South London and Sweden.

 

 

Zoe De Caluwé 

 

German artist Zoe De Caluwé's (they/them, b. 1997, Hamburg, Germany) diverse practice encompasses sculpture, painting, and found objects. They unite these different genres through a craft-based approach to their creative process. Informed by memory and emotion, they create consciously flawed and playful pieces that delve into themes of identity and anxiety, evoking a deep sense of melancholy. 

 

When De Caluwé immigrated to the UK in their teens they learned English through informal conversation. In their artistic practice, akin to their experience of language, informal processes seamlessly intertwine with their unique vernacular, becoming integral to the essence of their work. While having an academically informed understanding of art history, their practice is rooted in experimentation rather than formal training. 

 

De Caluwé undertook their Art History masters at Oxford University in 2022 and is now based in Margate. They have previously exhibited with TRA Collective, Irving Gallery, Gallery at Home and The Lido Stores.

 

 

Abigail Hampsey 

 

Abigail Hampsey is a working class painter, maker, storyteller and imaginer. Born in Lancashire (1996) She received her BA in Fine Art from Newcastle University (2019) and her MA in Painting from the Royal College of Art (2022). Hampsey’s work has been exhibited throughout the UK, Including WORKPLACE Gallery, London, OHSH Projects, London, The Holden Gallery, Manchester and Gallagher and Turner, Newcastle, amongst others. 

 

Hampsey was the recipient of The Basil H.Alkazzi Scholarship Award in painting at the Royal College of Art (2020-22) and has been shortlisted for multiple awards such as the Beep Painting Biennale and the Jacksons Art Prize (2023). As well as this, Hampsey is a Painting Tutor at Newcastle University, A Baker, Farm Hand, Barista and the newest member of the Contemporary British Painting Collective (2023). 

 

Hampsey’s practice is interested in the overall exploration of landscape. Landscapes of the mind, of narrative and of the world around her. Returning to the landscape of her youth after completing her MA in London, the artist is, for the first time, representing these landscapes first hand. Works are conceived during long walks and runs into the unfolding fields and fells that make up her local area. She documents what she sees and the conversations she has using drawings, writing and photography. 

 

Although Hampsey’s practice is born out of a deep compulsion to be outdoors, her work is laced with an underlying sense of sadness and loss. Loss of our “wild” spaces, the loss of rural places, traditions, crafts and communities that connect us to our landscapes and their histories. Her obsessive archiving and  documentation can’t help but feel like a tragic recognition of time running out. These feelings of loss have made their way into Hampsey’s work in the form of sculpture, craft, participatory works/ workshops and poetry, as well as in her painting. She invites herself as well as others to contemplate more clearly the rural worlds and people that may lie just beyond our sights. 

 

Peat bog, poets, sandstone, limestone, hag stones, dry stone, cairns, carvers, forests, fells and fairy folk populate the artists waking and sleeping moments, wandering their way into her work as if all this painted world is her reality. All the while, her work continually references the reality of daily life living and working in the North West of England. Both now and in her own families histories. Acknowledging the industries and materials of her hometown family heritage. Smiths, farmers, walkers and Wallers. Witches and window makers. All stories, fact or fiction, are up for grabs.

 

Thomas Langley 

 

Thomas Langley, b.1986, London, UK. Lives and works in London. Graduated from Royal Academy Schools, post graduate diploma (MA), London, in 2018. 

 

Currently working through exploring an intersection of painting and drawing practices, Langley creates drawings and paintings exploring abstraction, material dialogue and personal histories. Langley currently has a focus on painterly interpretations of craft and visual languages from the natural and human environment.

 

Louise Frances Smith 

 

Louise Frances Smith lives and works in Ramsgate, Kent. Her practice spans sculpture, installation and works on paper. Working with an array of materials including clay, seaweed and bioplastic, Smith creates highly textured surfaces to bring attention to the patterns and textures created by nature, magnifying micro details alongside man-made interventions. By collecting materials from her local coastline to use as materials in her work, Smith’s works are conceptually and physically linked to her local landscape where she takes her inspiration. 

 

Smith was selected as a finalist for The Ingram Prize 2023, exhibiting at Pavilion Gallery, Cromwell Place. Early in 2023 she received an Arts Council England National Lottery Project Grant to create a new body of work which was exhibited at Collect Open 2023, Somerset House. Smith later exhibited this work at The Margate School. 

 

In 2022 Smith received DYCP Arts Council England funding which led to her first solo show at Joseph Wales Gallery ‘HOLDFAST, experiments in seaweed, chalk & clay’. Other recent group exhibitions include - ‘The Wild Collective’, collaborative exhibition between Thrown Contemporary & Metafleur at Omved Gardens, London; ‘Despatch’, Work Show Grow Mail Art Collaboration, New Forest Heritage Centre, and ‘ING Discerning Eye 2021’, Mall Galleries, London. Louise Frances Smith graduated from City Lit with a Ceramics Diploma in 2019 and from Kingston University with a BA (Hons) Fine Art degree in 2009.

 

Olivia Strange 

 

Olivia Strange's multi-disciplinary practice spanning sculpture, painting, installation, moving image and poetry, is characterised by a layered narrative and highly visceral aesthetic. The work is concerned with disarming patriarchal descriptors via exploration of her Italian roots and draws on themes of Greco-Roman mythology, historical narratives around witches, the female body & jouissance to portray an empowering image of queer female subjectivity. 

 

Since graduating with Distinction from Chelsea College of Art- MA Fine Art (2017) having received the Vice Chancellor Scholarship, Strange has exhibited at Annka Kulty’s Gallery presenting an ambitious large scale immersive installation as part of the inaugural Cacotopia show, Southwark Park Galleries, ArtOn Istanbul, Unit 1 Gallery, Liminal Gallery (Solo Show), Every Woman Biennial and Basis Projektraum. Strange was selected for the 2021 cohort of the SPACE Studios X London Creative Network Artist Development Programme and the Ellipsis Prints 2021 Commissioning Project and Shortlisted for the prestigious Ingram Collection Purchase Prize 2021. More recently Strange was selected for the Radical Residency 2022 at Unit 1 Gallery in London, longlisted for the Robert Walters UK New Artist Award 2022, co-curated the group exhibition ‘Bag, Pedestal, Rabbit, Potato’ which centred around Ursula. K. Le Guin’s seminal text The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction at Staffordshire Street Gallery, London and shortlisted for the GIRLPOWER Residency 2023.

 

Maud Whatley 

 

Maud Whatley makes drawings which layer images and motifs taken from art-historical paintings, online archives, her camera roll and google image results. Her work intends to explore some of the politics of looking at things, the unexpected eroticism of placing different ideas in the context of one another and the ways in which the repetitive insistent touches of drawing can be sexy and weird. 

 

Whatley is based in Margate. She has shown work there at Liminal Gallery (Haunches, 2024, solo), LIMBO (A convenient size for the lap, 2019) and CRATE (Domino, 2018) as well as in London (Careless whisper, 2019) and Folkestone (Giggling quietly at the feel of it, 2018). She has spoken at the London Conference of Critical Thought (2018) and published drawings in Hotel magazine (2021).

 

 

Mercedes Workman 

 

Mercedes Workman’s work is a response to her overactive mind; she works both fast and determinedly. Reoccurring themes include relationships and interactions, perceptions, judgements, idiosyncrasies and cliches, particularly around womanhood, motherhood and identity. Her practice centres around her passion for ceramics combined with drawing from life and illustrative work expressed in vigorous brush work and mark making. 

 

She recently had a solo exhibition ‘ABC of Me’ at TKE Studios, where she is also a Studio Holder. Mercedes Workman lives and works in Margate, Kent.

 

Liminal Gallery 

 

Though the smallest bricks-and-mortar contemporary gallery in the UK, Liminal Gallery challenges the status quo, presenting the diverse and resonant voices of today’s artists from across the UK and Ireland. While historically women and minorities have been wildly underrepresented in the art world, we stand as proof that change is happening. 

 

Liminal Gallery’s permanent home at 34 Fort Hill, Margate, opened on 1st October 2022 after operating digitally and nomadically since its inception in April 2021. Our second exhibition space, The Cupboard, opened in March 2023 which provides local artists with a 3 month residency to showcase a solo exhibition in a playful and quirky space. Liminal Gallery Podcast was also launched in October 2022, used as a tool to widen access globally to their artists and their practice.