Erika Winstone LG to exhibit at Morley Gallery alongside John Bicknell. 28 May – 20 June 2026.
MORLEY GALLERY LONDON SE17HT
28 MAY – 20 JUNE 2026
P.V. 28 May 6 – 8 pm
Return reunites the work of John Bicknell and Erika Winstone three years since their shared studio residencies in Greece and London. This resulted in a show Host (2024) at Fokianou gallery Athens and culminates in this exhibition Return (2026) hosted by Morley Gallery London. The artists first met as MA students at The Slade, in 1982. They have been close friends since but have not worked or exhibited together before.
John Bicknell is an Athens based artist. His work explores figuration and abstraction, drawing on wide ranging sources in film, theatre, the history of painting and the landscape of Greece. He has exhibited widely in Greece and Europe and worked with numerous artists, film directors, and writers. The paintings and drawings presented at the Morley Gallery are emblematic of isolation or resistance. Beauty and brutality are exemplified in the juxtaposition of men and women in suits with the arid and beautiful landscape of Greece. The suited figures imply formality and the possibility of conflict, contrasting with the ancient rural landscape. In their frailty and their false authority, they reflect a condition of dominance and subservience. Multi layered pencil drawings on rice paper develop and reference ideas in the paintings, building new images from those beneath. The Land and work collages combine watercolour, pencil and oil transfer on rice paper. Illusion, frontal space and painted gesture reveal a figurative narrative, creating a visual tension that challenges the instinct of spontaneity and control, chance and order.
Erika Winstone is a London based artist. She presents an installation specifically for the Morley Gallery combining films with interrelated silverpoint drawings and watercolours. The installations combine recordings and memories from a residency; Host in Greece 2023 with her subsequent return visit there in March 2025. The last section of her film Return includes drawn paintings on fragments of glass, recorded on beaches in both Greece and the U.K. with unexpected scenarios that occur. Woven through a fragmented narrative, there is a sense of becoming through observation of multiple synchronicities. The marks in Winstone’s paintings on canvas and glass are the result of repeated attempts to hold the movement of her subjects, drawn from video, and incorporating the ancient techniques of silverpoint. This non-linear approach to composition relates to the complex dynamics between who we are and what we desire, with media combined to reflect the context in which the work is presented. Winstone is an elected member of The London Group. For the last 28 years she has consistently worked with her daughter who is a performer. She has exhibited nationally and internationally and is featured in the British Museum catalogue Drawing in Silver & Gold: Leonardo to Jasper Johns.
