Autumn Selective : Group Exhibition

Zoe Benbow is renowned for her dynamic compositions and expressive use of colour. Her latest works continue an ongoing exploration of landscape and atmosphere, offering a striking addition to the seasonal curation. Based in the heart of bustling East London, Benbow’s studio practice stands in sharp contrast to her subject matter. Her oil paintings invite viewers to step away from the urban environment and into a rich, imagined world shaped by memory and place.

Each piece begins with onsite drawings, slowly developed in the studio through a meticulous, layered painting process. Working in oil allows for both time and depth. In her most recent works, Benbow turns her focus to trees, inspired by the wooded landscapes of Grasmere or trails through Hampstead Heath. Through the repeated exploration of familiar motifs, her canvases become meditations on remembered landscapes — internalised terrains shaped by fleeting impressions and prolonged reflection.

Her repeated brushwork and intricate mark-making recall the visual rhythms of Gustav Klimt’s landscapes, particularly Birch Forest (1903), where the woodland dissolves into shimmering, patterned abstraction. Like Klimt, Benbow constructs her compositions through accumulative gestures that hover between figuration and abstraction. Her practice also shares affinities with David Hockney’s depictions of the Yorkshire countryside — especially in the use of strong colour and compositional layering to immerse the viewer in a felt experience of place. Yet where Hockney captures the immediacy of presence, Benbow's works are filtered through memory, time, and introspection — landscapes as much imagined as observed, as seen in Three Trees Green, 2025.

Zoe Benbow has exhibited widely in the UK and internationally, and her work is held in numerous private and public collections. She holds an MA (RCA) from the Royal College of Art, London, where her thesis was awarded Distinction, and a First Class BA (Hons) from Ravensbourne College of Art and Design.

Ali Bassett

Folktales, morals, old wives’ tales, overheard anecdotes, and the enduring wisdom of superstition are central to my work. I am drawn to the beauty of stories passed down through generations—words of guidance as we repeat the same mistakes, experience the same heartbreaks, and celebrate the same joys.

Ali Bassett is a multi-disciplinary artist based in Penzance, Cornwall. She studied Fine Art at Spike Island, Bristol, following a foundation in fine art at Cheltenham, and has exhibited widely across Cornwall, Oxford, Somerset, Bristol, and London.

Working primarily on canvas, Ali paints and stitches her pieces together in a patchwork of imagery, figuration, and pattern, creating narratives that are universally relatable. Her work draws on folktales, morals, old wives’ tales, overheard stories, and the wisdom of superstition—celebrating the beauty of stories handed down through generations.

The Cornish landscape is a constant influence in her practice. The headlands, sea, and surrounding environment subtly shape her creative process, with painted and stitched canvases echoing the patchwork of fields and the gentle hues of nature. Snippets of conversation, gestures between friends, or the colours of an autumn sunrise are interwoven into her compositions, allowing her to communicate stories that resonate on a universal level.

Ali’s career includes notable successes with Partnership Editions and a series of sell-out exhibitions in Newlyn and Penzance. Her work blends emotional storytelling with striking visual language, reflecting her deep connection to landscape, memory, and place, and continues to earn widespread recognition.

Maibritt Ulvedal Bjelke

Maibritt Ulvedal Bjelke's artistic journey began with paper. While studying at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris during the early nineties, Bjelke became part of a group of French artists who sought to challenge the traditional boundaries of art by using external materials. Paper has remained her primary medium, offering her endless possibilities for exploration in both two-dimensional and sculptural forms. Her process involves layering vast amounts of paint on paper webs which she meticulously cuts into strips and arranges into intricate grids, creating powerful works that invite deep reflection.

Bjelke’s work has been exhibited extensively worldwide with notable solo exhibitions at Weinberger Gallery in Copenhagen, Proarta in Zurich, Galerie Pugliese Levi in Berlin, Galerie Maria Lund in Paris — and a major solo show at the Daugavpils Mark Rothko Art Centre; Chromartic Matters (2019) highlights her continued relevence in contemporary art.

Her impressive education includes a Diplôme d’Arts Plastiques/MFA from the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris and a unique residency at the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation in the USA. Bjelke’s work is held in numerous prestigious collections including the Rothko Museum in Latvia, the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation in Connecticut and the Municipality of Vitry-sur-Seine in Paris. She has received several awards such as the Prix de Vitry in 1999 and the Prix de Bernanos in 1993.

Her work continues to push boundaries offering a profound commentary on the transformative power of paper and paint with a process that reflects her deep connection to both material and method.

Susan Bleakley

Susan Bleakley is a multi talented British artist utilising the mediums of paint, sculpture, installation, photography and film. She studied at the Royal College of Art and the Falmouth College of Arts. Susan Bleakley primarily studied sculpture although she now works in many different mediums. Her work has exhibited extensively throughout the UK, Europe and North America in mixed and solo shows.

Susan’s respect for ‘mother earth’ became inseparable from her art - her large colourfield paintings exude quietude; she says they are about stripping back veils to reveal the internal voice. Susan’s perfectly balanced paintings resound with smooth flowing energy.

Formally, these paintings are labelled as pure abstraction and have the meditative rigour of American abstract painter Agnes Martin, herself drawn to the spiritual purity of the North American Indian life - inseparable from nature. The Bauhaus master Josef Albers with his writings on colour theory, had a huge influence on 20th century abstract painters - Brigit Riley’s famous stripe paintings being our best known example of simultaneous contrast. Susan’s use of this technique is nuanced and beautiful, Her choice of colours quiver with light, inside and out, in synergy with the flowers and foliage growing in her clifftop garden - which she tends to daily.

Adam Bridgland

Since graduating from the Royal College of Art in 2006, Bridgland has used a diverse range of materials and working methods to pursue an incisive and often witty exploration of distinctively British sentiments, externalising the underlying sense of loss and nostalgia that permeates our memories.

Ed Burkes

Burkes views the voice of painting as residing between music and written language. His images evolve from life drawings, striving for honesty in their direction. The titles of his paintings are intrinsically linked to the surface of the work, acting as question marks. His primary goal in image-making is to ask questions.

Mark Charlton

Born in Margate in 1976, Mark Charlton began his career in animation and design before transitioning to fine art. Now based in Shoreham-by-Sea, UK, he is an abstract expressionist artist whose work focuses on the exploration of surface and material. Drawing inspiration from nature, science and the layered histories embedded in the landscape, Charlton creates compositions that invite viewers to engage deeply with texture and form.

Merlyn Chesterman 

Merlyn Chesterman RE is an accomplished print artist with a career spanning over four decades, gaining worldwide recognition for her breathtaking woodcut prints. Based on the North Devon coast. Her art delves into the natural world, focusing on the sea, waves, weather, and the windblown trees and grasses of her surroundings. Utilising the texture of her wooden blocks, she creates prints that reflect the organic patterns, rhythms, and gentle hues of nature.

Danielle Creenaune 

Danielle Creenaune’s work occupies a liminal space between abstraction and representation, where the experience of place—rather than a literal rendering of landscape—guides her practice. Wind-swept and gestural, her lithographs distil the essence of her subjects into reductive, confident marks, released onto paper through the alchemy of printmaking.

An Australian artist who lived abroad for 18 years, Creenaune worked from her print studio in Barcelona before returning in 2019 to Wollongong, New South Wales. Her central concern lies in the intrinsic dialogue between landscape and people: how place is shaped by memory, and how this is expressed through a visual language of gesture.

Creenaune has received international recognition, including the René Carcan International Printmaking Award (1st Mention, 2016, Belgium) and the Corsair Prize for Innovation at Inkmasters Cairns (2018). Her lithographs represented Australia in the International Print Triennial, Krakow (2015), and her artist’s book When the Sea Wakes Inside You was exhibited at the 250th Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, London (2018). Her work is held in public collections such as the National Gallery of Australia.

She holds both a Bachelor and Master of Art from the University of New South Wales, Sydney (1997).

Ian Fenton

Ian Fenton’s practice places cut paper firmly at the centre of artistic enquiry. Working with large-format, hand-painted sheets, he layers water-based paints and inks to create tactile compositions where every tear, cut and brushstroke is made by hand—nothing is digital. This physical process honours the integrity of materials and rewards close, sustained looking.

Collage has often been seen as peripheral in Western art history, associated with childhood, amateurism, or the late works of Matisse. Fenton begins from that position and pushes cut paper into new territory, treating it as a primary expressive form rather than a sideline. His restrained palette—shades of blue punctuated by flashes of orange—carries emotional weight, balancing intensity with control and finding freedom through limitation.

Balancing experimentation with a personal, inward focus, Fenton’s compositions are shaped by memory, reflection, and responses to literature. Recent works engage with The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot, not as illustration but as thematic ground, while others act as tributes, such as the veiled figure in Dubhghaill or Himavant, a meditation on present-day anxieties.

Fenton works from his studio in Brighton. While not overtly centred on identity, his perspective as a queer Irish artist inevitably informs his sensibility. Themes of dislocation, reverence, and quiet emotion thread through the work, which resists spectacle in favour of depth, clarity, and the insistence that both materials and lived experience belong at the heart of contemporary practice.

MAria Floyd 

Working from her Dartmoor studio, she makes drawings and paintings that respond directly to the landscape, capturing the raw, high energy beauty of coast and moorland through the instinctive placement of abstract shapes and expressive marks.

Simon Gaiger

Simon's wood and steel sculptures are very much influenced by the rich and varied layers of his life and surroundings – his childhood, time spent working as a shipwrights assistant, the sea, engineering, history and mythology – drawings and thoughts collected over many years in the piles of black and grey sketchbooks that fill his home and studio in Wales. 

They are descriptions of the elements, forces and patterns within the landscape, natural and manmade, a synthesis of where these meet, clash or unify. There is a raw tension of opposing forces in his sculptures, elements strain and pull against each other or balance precipitously. Many of them can be re-configured, changing the interplay of spaces within and around them, inviting participation from the viewer. Where colour is used it unifies form and accentuates the play of light.

Adam Halls

Adam Halls is a contemporary textile artist who is pushing the boundaries of the medium with his stunning, intricate works. By combining traditional techniques with a modern sensibility and drawing inspiration from the natural beauty of his surroundings. His works offer a glimpse into the possibilities of textile art and are a testament to the power of patient, careful craftsmanship.

Peter Hayes

Peter Hayes is a British sculptor renowned for his innovative approach to ceramics and his mastery of experimental firing techniques, particularly raku. His artistic journey has been shaped by extensive travels and time spent with communities preserving centuries-old ceramic traditions, reflecting his deep curiosity about the origins of the medium and its ancient ties to the Earth.

Hayes works between two studios — in Bath, UK, and Udaipur, India — drawing inspiration from both Western and Eastern traditions to enrich his practice.

Raku, first developed in 16th-century Japan, is central to his work. Traditionally linked to tea ceremonies, the process involves firing pieces at high heat, removing them while still red-hot, and cooling them in combustible materials. The results are unpredictable and striking, with smoke and fire leaving intricate patterns and textures on the clay surface.

Remaining faithful to this natural process, Hayes works exclusively with earth clays, embracing the raw energy of the kiln. His contemporary ceramics carry a resonance of diverse cultural influences while remaining unmistakably his own — timeless works that feel both elemental and deeply personal.

Ash Holmes

Ash Holmes is a Sydney-based artist whose abstract paintings draw inspiration from her surroundings on Guringai Land (Sydney’s Northern Beaches) and her exploration of color psychology. As a self-taught, fourth-generation artist, Holmes channels her creativity naturally, often working intuitively based on impulsive visions or unexpected sources of inspiration.

Adrian Holmes

Adrian Holmes is a printmaker rooted in the tradition of Japanese woodblock and the Sōsaku Hanga movement. First introduced to mokuhanga while living in Japan, he has since dedicated years to mastering its techniques — guided by both self-study and mentorship from Japanese artisans. His work balances the discipline of traditional processes with the expressive freedom central to Sōsaku Hanga, where the artist designs, carves and prints each work by hand.

Now based in Cornwall, Holmes divides his time between practice and teaching at the St Ives School of Painting and West Dean College of Arts. His recent series, Greenhouse & Stone, comprises 20 prints inspired by local walks, shifting viewpoints, and a growing fascination with plants. Loosely abstract and gestural, the works reflect his evolving relationship with the natural world while staying true to the integrity of Japanese woodblock craft.

Bernard Irwin

Born in Malaya in 1953, Bernard Irwin is a British artist whose career spans painting, sculpture and ceramics. Having grown up in England and Germany, and later studied in the Netherlands, Irwin returned to England in 1981, working from his studio in Bristol before settling in Cornwall in 1996, where he now paints full time.

Wil Jansen

Wil Jansen is a Dutch artist whose practice is profoundly rooted in nature, drawing inspiration from the intricate beauty of flowers, the changing seasons, and the fleeting qualities of weather. Her work captures the essence of these natural phenomena, transforming them into vivid abstractions that explore the interplay of colour, form, and texture.

Lee Johnson

Lee Johnson, born in Wiltshire, has lived and worked in London since 2000. He gained an MA in Fine Art from Central Saint Martins in 2001.

Joni Sternbach 

Joni Sternbach is an American artist, photographer, and filmmaker known for her use of historical photographic processes, particularly the tintype—a 19th-century technique she adapts to contemporary subjects. Her surfer portraits, made on rocky coasts and driftwood shores, capture both the physicality of existence and the deep relationships between people, landscape, and the ocean.

Over a career spanning decades, Sternbach has explored themes of domesticity, sexuality, gender, and identity. She studied at the School of Visual Arts (BFA) and New York University/International Center of Photography (MA), later teaching there for over a decade. A founding faculty member at Penumbra Foundation in NYC, she continues to teach and mentor.

Sternbach’s work is held in major international collections, including LACMA, The High Museum, the National Portrait Gallery (London), and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. She is represented by Von Lintel Gallery (Los Angeles), Black Box Projects (London), Circle Contemporary (Cornwall), Galerie Hug (Paris), and Arc Fine Art (East Hampton, NY).

Kristen McClarty

Kristen McClarty is a South African printmaker based in Kommetjie, near Cape Town, whose practice is grounded in relief and monotype printmaking. Her work is shaped by a profound connection to materials and the belief that lived experiences leave lasting traces on the world around us. Recent series of woodblocks explore the concept of residual energy—marks left on rock, water, and air—while her sea swimming informs a tactile exploration of texture, rhythm, and movement.

CIRCLE Contemporary is currently showing Trace of a Red Tide and Leaving Trace in Deep Water—limited editions of four woodcuts with a single artist proof printed on Awagami hemp lace paper, handcrafted in Japan. This collaboration merges traditional Japanese papermaking with contemporary printmaking, highlighting McClarty’s sensitivity to craft and material.

In 2024, McClarty was elected an Associate Member (ARE) of the Royal Society of Painter-Printmakers, UK, a recognition of her technical excellence and international presence. As part of this honour, her woodcut Suspended Thoughts (2022) entered the RE Diploma Collection at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford—her first work to be held in a UK public collection.

Maria Nimmo

Marina Nimmo is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice spans sculpture, painting, printmaking, and installation. For over twenty years she combined her own creative work with teaching Fine Art, before completing an MA at Chelsea College of Arts in 2017 and committing fully to her practice. Now based in rural France, her work is shaped by the shifting cycles of nature—the flow of rivers, the pull of tides, and the rhythms of the seasons.

Her sculptures begin with energetic drawings that develop into hand-built clay forms. Initially raw and weighty, they are gradually refined through an intensive process into delicate, sensuous shapes. This transformation embodies the tension between strength and fragility while reflecting her sensitivity to environmental change.

The resulting works captivate the viewer with their fragile beauty, inviting contemplation on the vulnerability of our environment and the interconnectedness of all living things. Marina Nimmo's sculptures are not just aesthetic objects; they are poignant reminders of the delicate balance between nature and humanity.

John O'Carroll

John O'Carroll (Cornwall, *1958) is a contemporary artist whose practice is deeply rooted in place, time, and material. Dividing his year between his studio on the Cornish coast and a winter studio in Egypt’s Western Desert, he draws inspiration from two landscapes shaped by elemental force.

For over 30 years, O’Carroll has also worked as an archaeological illustrator, meticulously recording ancient sites. This discipline of close observation and respect for the past permeates his art. He often incorporates pigments, ancient painting techniques and objects with historical resonance, allowing traces of antiquity to infuse his contemporary practice. Precious metals are a recurring element in his work, carrying ancient symbolism and interacts with his restricted colour palette to create surfaces that seem to capture and release fleeting moments of time.

His career spans decades of international recognition. O’Carroll has exhibited worldwide, including solo exhibitions with Roger Katwijk Gallery in the Netherlands and at Pan Amsterdam, as well as exhibitions at the Holly Solomon Gallery in New York and the Dutch-Flemish Institute in Cairo. He contributed to significant projects including the Colours of Oasis exhibition at the Rijksmuseum van Oudheden, Leiden (2012), and the Anthropocene exhibition at Cornwall’s Eden Project. In 2005, he participated in the Alexandria International Biennial Discovering the Book, and his work has also been shown at the British Embassy and the residence of the Dutch ambassador in Cairo.

Collected by both private and corporate patrons — including Akzo Nobel, AMC, VUmc, Loyens & Loeff, Accenture, and the NCM British Headquarters in Cardiff. O’Carroll’s works offer more than visual experience; they invite contemplation. Through his practice, he continues to navigate the intersections of art, archaeology and the vast landscapes of the natural world.

Jynsym Ong

Jynsym Ong is a studio potter born in London and currently based in Oxford. A graduate of Clay College, Stoke-On-Trent, Jynsym's dedication to her craft earned her a prestigious Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation Scholarship, enabling her to travel to Japan for an immersive apprenticeship at Mitoh Gama (Kiln) in Karatsu, Saga Prefecture. During her two years in Japan, she honed her skills and deepened her appreciation for traditional ceramic techniques and aesthetics.

Pine Feroda

PINE FERODA is the collective name used by three British artists (Merlyn Chesterman, Ian Phillips and Judith Westcott), who together create large-scale, dramatic woodcut prints inspired by the extraordinary coastline of North Devon and Cornwall. Craggy rock formations, tumultuous seas and the play of light upon water are all explored through their unique working practice.

Lisa-Marie PRICE 

Lisa Price works from her studio in Hertfordshire, creating paintings that reflect material sensitivity, ecological awareness, and the quiet force of restraint. Her process begins with the land itself — foraging earth minerals, handcrafting watercolours, and painting on off-cut linen. This sustainable, mindful approach shapes a body of work that is both grounded and contemplative.

“My practice is rooted in sustainability, mindfulness, and respect for the natural world,” Price writes. “Each painting emerges from an ongoing dialogue with raw elements, telling stories drawn from urban and rural landscapes, and sparking conversations about climate change, the cosmos, and our need to reconnect with the earth.”

Occupying a space between abstraction and landscape, her works use tonal subtlety, restrained mark-making, and negative space to invite prolonged looking — a quiet resistance to speed and excess. Whether installed singly or in modular pairings, they act as meditative anchors, offering both refinement and depth.

CIRCLE is delighted to welcome Lisa to its core group of artists, with new works available throughout the year. Commissions are welcomed for those wishing to explore bespoke pieces in dialogue with her practice.

Trevor Price

Trevor Price is a British artist specialising in handmade drypoint prints, working between studios in London and St Ives. Elected a member of the Royal Society of Painter-Printmakers in 1994, he later served as Vice President from 2013–2018.

His recent seascape and woodland series are created by carving and scraping plates with a drypoint needle and dremel — a meticulous, unforgiving process that demands precision. Ink is then rolled across the plate and printed by hand through an etching press onto damp paper. Up close, the works reveal intricate, abstract mark-making, while at a distance they resolve into highly representational, almost photographic images.

Price’s work is held in major collections, including the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Ashmolean Museum, the Fitzwilliam Museum, the Guangdong Museum of Art, the Yinchuan Contemporary Art Museum, Yale University, the Office of Public Works in Dublin, and the Bank of England. He has received multiple national printmaking awards, including the Printmaking Today Award (2017), and in 2020 was commissioned by China’s National Academy of Painting to create a large relief print exhibited at the National Art Museum of China in Beijing.

Chris Prindl

Chris Prindl is a ceramic artist whose work bridges Japanese tradition and the natural beauty of Cornwall. His journey began in 1987 under Toshiko Takaezu at Princeton University, followed by a magna cum laude degree in East Asian Studies (1990) and a two-year apprenticeship with master potter Takao Okazaki in Yamagata, Japan—a formative experience that grounded his practice in both discipline and innovation.

Having spent part of his childhood in Tokyo and early adulthood in Yamagata, Prindl absorbed not only the techniques but also the philosophy of Japanese ceramics. Simplicity, natural finishes, and an affinity with Zen aesthetics continue to resonate in his work, even as he incorporates bold primary colours that reflect Cornwall’s vitality.

His collections move fluidly between cultures: vibrant plates and bowls inspired by Cornwall sit alongside Tamba-style vessels, ikebana vases, and moon forms rooted in Japanese tradition. Central to his practice is wood firing, introduced during his apprenticeship and perfected over decades, linking him to the legacy of potters such as Shoji Hamada.

Prindl’s ceramics embody the Japanese principle of “work of self, obtainment of self,” reflecting a lifelong commitment to growth, material integrity, and the timeless dialogue between place and tradition.

Yvonne Robert

Born in Germany and now based in Zurich, Yvonne Robert creates vibrant, gestural paintings driven by an intuitive relationship with colour and form. Raised in a family of artists, she recalls a childhood immersed in aesthetic conversation—where discussions around colour, shape and 1960s pattern became foundational to her visual language.

Matt Smith 

Matt Smith is a Cornwall-based photographer, celebrated for his distinctive Polaroid imagery. His work beautifully captures the essence of Cornwall’s rugged landscapes and serene coastlines, as well as scenes from his travels further afield. Using the unique qualities of Polaroid film, he creates images that are both nostalgic and full of atmosphere.

Jouni Toni 

Jouni Toni (b. 1984, Finland) lives and works in Tampere. A graduate of the Kankaanpää School of Fine Arts (2010) and a former resident of the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam (2014–15), he received the Royal Painting Prize in 2015. His work is held in major private and public collections in Finland and the Netherlands, including the Helsinki Art Museum, the Finnish Art Society, DELA, and the UMC collection.

From the far north of Finland to the temperate landscapes of the Netherlands, Toni creates intuitive, colour-rich paintings that feel both abstract and familiar. His practice, which also extends to sculpture and digital animation, begins with a painter’s instinct for shape, form, and colour, transforming memories and observations into a personal visual language. Rather than depicting specific figures or places, he distils archetypes from imagination and memory that speak to shared human emotions.

Digital sketching lies at the centre of his process, enabling imagery that slips beyond physical laws while remaining grounded in the materiality of paint. Toni views human experience as common ground, inviting viewers into quietly guided encounters where perception itself becomes part of the work.

Residencies have been pivotal to his development: at the Rijksakademie, his techniques and perspectives expanded, while a recent residency at WOW in Amsterdam encouraged new experimentation. Works from this period — paintings and small sculptures — were presented to acclaim at the Vertical Gallery.

Amy Wright

Amy Wright is an Australian artist whose paintings unfold like botanical tapestries, alive with the abundance of overgrown gardens. For Wright, the world of art begins and ends with the intricate beauty of flowers. Her practice combines the precision of botanical observation with a freer, more intuitive approach to drawing, creating richly textured works defined by colour and pattern.

The eye is led restlessly across the canvas — from one lush patch of foliage to another — never quite settling, but instead suspended in the intricate detail of her compositions. A warm palette, recalling the flushed tones of the Bloomsbury painters Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant, infuses her works with atmosphere, while her use of fragmented patterning evokes both Vuillard’s interiors and the flat pictorial space of Japanese woodblock prints.

Wright’s paintings function as intricate jigsaw-like landscapes, at once decorative and contemplative. Rooted in her Australian identity yet informed by a wide range of influences, they create visual narratives that pay homage to artistic tradition while offering fresh contemporary resonance. Her work is held in numerous private and corporate collections internationally.