'frequency' groups artists who in their own individual ways engage with painting’s formal elements: colour, optics, material, structure and balance and gestural mark making.

Katrina Blannin’s current practice explores the notion of ‘flat space’ and geometric construction where both negative and positive space (figure and field) are considered equally and create a foundational premise for systems-based chromatic patterns. Blannin has said of her work: “symmetry and asymmetry are essential considerations…Working with a series of permutations, sequences or with mirror images, rather than a single image, can inspire ideas about movement. Olivia Longstaff’s paintings are the result of a systematic studio process that pits deliberate and sequential action against the random physicality of paint. The artist follows a programme of formal decisions that determine mark, colour palette, scale and composition which are subsequently informed, altered and transformed by the nature of the material. The resulting pieces document the ‘conversation’ between the matter and its method of application. Throughout her career Onya McCausland has worked almost exclusively in monochrome, pursuing an understanding of mark-making that rejects a dependency on colour, specifically its associations within the realm of formal abstraction. Her practice seeks to capture the essence of her materials, allowing her to draw and paint with a sense of weightlessness both in terms of legacy and physicality.

In Anna Mossman’s ‘Shivers and Structures’ series, the works contain pure black repeated forms cohering into an undulating pattern, interspersed with pale colour areas. The ‘Structures’ use the repeated, diagonal axis, set within a square, and overlay pencil line with pale colour. The works engage specifically with optical and spatial disorientation, echoing and revitalising elements of the photographic, such as light, focus, exposure and filtration, while transposing those elements to the drawn and painted surface, with a particular focus on extended time and duration in the process of making. Diana Palmer’s paintings address the relationship between a figure and its environment. Conveying movement, the pieces capture observed and abstracted fragments of light, atmospheric changes or physical gestures. Through her work as a librarian at the Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance, learning about contemporary dance has informed her ideas around the performance of painting, visualising movement and spatial relations. Whether inspired by a memory of a place or a photograph, the process of painting is a playful interpretation of spatial relations. Performing figures may be visible, or else the artist’s perception of her surroundings may be the sole subject matter. Fleur Simon primarily works in epoxy resin on plywood. She creates abstract paintings that mix natural imagery with her emotional states. She visualises these internal landscapes in her chromatic, gestural and visceral surfaces.

Emma Tod’s paintings hinge on just-aboutness: just-about legible shapes; just-about states of mind that swing between the supremacy humanism granted, with its hierarchy over plants, animals and minerals, and the implacable consciousness of what that has wrought. Tod layers the colour through optical colour mixing, using transparent glazes one over the other, so that you can see through as well as look at the hues. As the green seeps into rust, you pick up the aura of the painting – an aura of moving through water as we move through time. Cherry Smyth 2023. Imogen Wetherell’s recent paintings show compositional tension and harmony. Intertwining coloured bands mirror and repeat across the surface. It’s within these measured arrangements that the luminosity and the vibrancy of colour is heightened, and visual perception moves back and forth. Through tonal graduation and incremental layering, she creates visual undulation and rhythm. In Anisa Zahedi’s work, the focus is on the flatness of paint, and its contrast with the dynamic of shaped wood. Fascinated with colour and shape and how the composition and construction can be almost uncomfortable. The colour remains static and vital for Zahedi, adding energy and movement to the work, giving it a pulse.

‘frequency’ represents not only the cyclical aspects of making but the ability of these women to channel their own ingenuity and artistic sensitivities. Incrementally a gesture, a line and a layer culminate; an artist’s intuitive autonomy, practice and discipline manifesting into her own ‘frequency'.