MARGO SELBY
b. 1977, Eastbourne, UK
Selby is an artist and designer working with colour and geometric form in textiles. She makes handwoven artworks, and oversees the design work of the Margo Selby Studio for mill production and commercial textiles applications – her tenet being ‘Art Into Industry’ – an approach to making art that is akin to that of the ‘Old Masters’ and mistresses, with their expanded studios and public commissions.
Selby uses thread to create abstract geometric artworks that explore repetition and transition, symmetry and asymmetry, the dynamic and the stable. She is interested in the relationship between the body and the machine, hand and industry, craft and technology. The loom, and the disciplined nature of weaving as a practice, provides boundaries and constraints which can be tested. The orderly nature of the craft of weaving is reflected in the developing designs of the artworks. She is satisfied by rhythmic and uniform repetition – where each element of a composition is changed in a methodical progression.
Studied at Chelsea College of Art & Design and the Royal College of Art in London, with a term at Atelier National d’Art in Paris. She now teaches in various institutions, and has her own studio weaving workshops. In 2020, Margo was the recipient of the Craft Council’s Collect Open Award for her large scale textiles installation Vexillum at Somerset House, and, in 2021, the bi-annual Turner Medal for ‘Britain’s Greatest Colourist’. She also gave the Turner Lecture, reflecting on her practice. 2022 saw her showing at multiple applied arts and craft fairs including Collect, London Craft Week, London Art Fair. In 2023, Selby exhibited at Art Miami, British Art Fair and Collect.
ANDY BURGESS
b. 1969, London, UK
Lauded by Annabel Sampson, Deputy Editor of Tatler as “the next David Hockney” painter Andy Burgess, who hails from London but lives in Arizona, continues to expand upon his fascination with contemporary architecture. Burgess selects the subjects for his paintings with the discernment of the portrait painter. Buildings are chosen for their clean lines, bold geometric design, and dynamic forms. Burgess approaches his subjects with a fresh eye, simplifying and abstracting forms even further and inventing, somewhat irreverently, new colour schemes that expand the modernist lexicon beyond the minimalist white palette and rigid use of primary colours. Real places are sometimes re-invented, the architecture and design altered and modified, with new furniture and landscaping and a theatrical lighting that invests the painted scene with a dream-like quality and a peaceful and seductive allure.
Burgess explores in depth the genesis of modern architecture in Europe and the US and its relationship to modern art, avant-garde design, and abstract painting. Burgess explains his fascination with modernist architecture thusly:
‘Despite the huge impact of early modern architecture, the innovative and subtle minimalist buildings that I am researching, with their concrete and steel frames, flat roofs, and glass walls, never became the dominant mode of twentieth century building. We have continued to build the vast majority of houses in a traditional and conservative idiom, so that these great examples of modern architecture, designed by the likes of Gropius, Loos and Breuer to name but a few, are still shocking and surprising today in their boldness and modernity, almost a hundred years after they were built.’
Andy Burgess’s work combines two of his greatest artistic passions, mid-century and modernist architecture, and collage. In his series of highly intricate pieces, Burgess has used hand painted paper to construct renditions of his favourite modern architecture. Replacing acrylic paint with gorgeous permanent inks he has introduced another level of textural interest. The ink adds a beautiful translucency and wash-like textures to the surface of the image…. making the finished work somewhat tapestry and mosaic like. The pleasure of these works lies in the complex shapes, the analogue quality of the fabrication and the sparkling crystalline colors. Those familiar with his work will recognize some of the iconic subject matter such as Frank Lloyd Wright’s wonderful Guggenheim Museum and famous Fallingwater residence as well as Los Angeles classics such as The Stahl House and other desert modern masterpieces. But there is an eclectic range of architectural subjects that spans decades and continents in a quest to do justice to the architecture of modern times!
Alongside the large-scale paintings, Burgess creates collages which reflect his love of vintage graphics, particularly those from the 1930s–50s, a “golden age” in American graphic design and advertising. Burgess has been collecting vintage American ephemera for many years; this ephemera is then unapologetically deconstructed, cut up into tiny pieces and reconstructed into visual and verbal poems, dazzling multi-coloured pop art pieces, and constructed cityscapes.
Burgess has completed many important commissions for public and private institutions including Crossrail (London’s largest ever engineering project), Cunard, APL shipping, Mandarin Oriental Hotels, a new medical centre in San Jose, California and most recently, Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital in London.
In 2021 Andy Burgess started creating a series of site-specific artworks for the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital in London. The project, initiated by CW+ – the official charity of the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital NHS Foundation Trust – and facilitated by Cynthia Corbett Gallery, which represents Burgess internationally, aims to improve and enhance the NICU environment for patients, relatives and staff.
Working together with the NICU team, Burgess was reminiscing on the hospital’s neighbourhoods and its iconic views, sights and buildings in collaboration with hospital staff. Known for his unique, abstract and colourful style, Andy has transformed selected London scenes into incredible artworks to create a warm and welcoming environment for both parents and staff to enjoy. The display, installed on the 16th June 2022, includes a panorama of London, an image of Albert Bridge and another of a London Underground station. Additionally, Andy produced two smaller scale abstract pieces developed from the colour palettes of his larger works, which were gifted as part of the commission. CW+ also acquired two existing works by Andy for the unit through Cynthia Corbett Gallery.
Burgess’s collectors include the Booker prize-winning author Kazuo Ishiguro, actor and writer Emma Thompson, the Tisch family in New York, Beth De Woody, Board Member of The Whitney Museum and Richard and Ellen Sandor in Chicago, who have one of the top 100 art collections in America.
In March 2023, Burgess published of a new limited edition book of abstract ink on paper collages called Tiger’s Eye in conjunction with an exhibition at Laughlin Mercantile in Tucson, Arizona and the release of four luxurious silk scarf designs based on the collages.
Andy Burgess returns to Expo Chicago with five brand new series and new limited edition hand embellished silkscreen prints.EBONY RUSSELL
b. AustraliaEbony Russell is an Australian ceramic artist who uses an unorthodox approach to construct ceramic sculptures. Her unique technique was developed out of an interest in gendered aesthetics, labour and traditional craft practices where Russell methodically pipes porcelain in series of intricate layers to build gravity- defying forms. Challenging the traditional making processes of decorative vessels; in her works the decoration becomes the structure, and the boundaries between the two are erased. Exploring established perceptions of cultural and artistic practices that were once exclusively coded as feminine and thus insignificant, Russell’s work celebrates the decorative, promiscuous aesthetics and politics of purity; the superficial, excess and delight – with pleasure.
Russell completed a Bachelor of Applied Arts (Honours) at Monash University in 2003 and in 2019 graduated from The National Art School Sydney with a Masters of Fine Art. Russell has won many awards including the Franz International Rising Star Award in 2018 and the Meroogal Women’s Art Prize in 2023. Major exhibitions include ‘Think Pinker’, Gavlak Gallery Los Angeles (2023), ‘SABOTAJE ESTEìTICO’, Yusto Giner Gallery, Spain (2022), ‘Halcyon Days’, Modern Eden Gallery, San Francisco (2022), ‘Clay Dynasty’, The Powerhouse Museum (2022), ‘Interconnected’, NERAM (2022), Young Masters Art Prize, London (2023), Teetering on the Brink, Claire Oliver Gallery, Harlem New York (2024), and Homo Faber, Venice (2024).
Press:
Ebony Russell Announced as the Winner of Brookfield Properties Craft Award 2025
Ceramic Review Feature: "Piped Dreams"
Artsy’s "5 Artists on Our Radar" – March 2025
Art Mama feature
More Press Highlights
Australian award winning ceramicist Ebony Russell was recently acquired for the Wedgewood collection of the Victoria & Albert Museum in the UK and won the prestigious 2025 UK Crafts Council Brookfield Properties award.
ALASTAIR GORDON
b.1979, Scotland, UK
“I don’t seek a view but a sense of place. From here the paintings are developed in the studio to appear as drawing boards and sketchbook work. Oscillating between hyperrealism and intuitive gesture, they both tame and subsume to the wilderness itself.” - as Gordon states.
Alastair Gordon is best known for highly illusionistic paintings (rooted in the quodlibet tradition) but he combines his heightened sense of realism with historical notions of intuitive wildness and British wilderness painting. Gordon makes paintings about paintings; works that oscillate between artifact and artifice. We are presented with landscapes as still lives and sketches as completed works. Certain questions emerge about authenticity, the painting process and how we consider notions of landscape today. The veracity of the object is constantly in doubt yet the wild is ever calling.
In making his works Gordon travelled to the outer reaches of the British Isles, undertaking a painting pilgrimage from the heights of the Lake District, depths of Caithness peat flows and furthest reaches of the Outer Hebrides. Sitting atop mountain peaks and sinking into peat bogs each work begins in the landscape.
Alastair Gordon is a London based artist and tutor and a course leader for the Graduate Residency Scheme at Leith School of Art, Edinburgh. Last year, Alastair was artist in residency for City and Guilds of London Art School followed by a parallel residency with PADA Studios in Lisbon.
Notable Alastair’s solo exhibitions: Quodlibet, Aleph Contemporary, UK (2021), Without Borders, Aleph Contemporary, UK, (2020), and at City and Guilds of London Art School, UK (2020) and Souvenirs from the Waste Land, Ahmanson Gallery, Los Angeles (2017), at First Things Gallery, New York (2017).
Notable group exhibitions include: LA Art Show, Cynthia Corbett Gallery, Los Angeles (2024), Miami Art Fair, Cynthia Corbett Gallery, Miami (2023), British Art Fair, Cynthia Corbett Gallery, London (2023), Chicago Expo, Cynthia Corbett Gallery, Chicago (2023), Here After, Bridge Projects, Los Angeles, (2022), Unpacking Gainsborough, Cynthia Corbett Gallery, London (2021), The Long Echo, Terrace Gallery, London (2021), The Just, Alpeh Contemporary London, (2020), The Collectors Room, JGM Gallery, London (2020), London Art Fair, Cynthia Corbett Gallery, London (2020), Summer / Winter Exhibition, Royal Academy, London (2020).
He was the inaugural winner of the Shoesmiths painting prize and co-recipient of the Dentons Art Prize. Gordon has been shortlisted for the Denton Art Prize, 2020.
Gordon’s work is found in numerous prominent private and public collections including Beth Rudin de Woody, New York; Simmons and Simmons, London; Ahmanson Collection, Los Angeles; Landmark PLC, London; Bow Arts Trust, London; The Royal Bank of Scotland Collection, and The Glasgow School of Art Alumni Collection.
Scottish painter Alastair Gordon know for his combination of Plein Air and Trompe-l’oeil meticulous paintings that appear so realistic that even the tape looks real is currently having his second solo Museum show in the UK, “Objects of Enchantment”.KLARI REISS
b. 1977, USA
Klari Reis has invented her own medium, using epoxy polymer (a form of liquid plastic) with many added ingredients including pure pigment, acrylic and secrets. Reis’s design is almost otherworldly, her colours unique and her patterns inventive. Her artwork is both object and fine art and she is at the forefront of innovative use of art resources.
Klari Reis’ new works are imaginative recreations and curious playful inquiries into our place in the world. The artist proposes new ways of seeing and understanding our natural environment through painting and sculpture, testing the boundaries of logical systems. By considering the contradictory implications of the word natural and exploring the relationships between the human and non-human, Klari embraces possibility through work that is joyful and hopeful.
Klari Reis is an American artist with a Master of Fine Arts (2004) and an Associate Research Fellowship (2005) from the City and Guilds of London Art School. She currently lives and works in San Francisco and represented by Cynthia Corbett gallery.
California artist and British Trained painter Klari Reis known for her inventive use of classical Pigment paints mixed with Epoxy resin is now in over 50 major institutions and hospitals all over the world including Google, Meta, Microsoft, The Great Ormond Street Hospital and Stanford University.CRISTINA SCHEK
b. Transylvania
Cristina Schek is the photosensitive kind: she thinks in pictures, her imagination always in focus. A Transylvanian Surrealist rooted in London, Schek crafts conceptual digital works that explore identity illusion and the shifting nature of representation. Literature, cinema and art history act as her continual muses, guiding her into layered visual narratives where the self becomes both subject and symbol.
Recent works from Diving Upwards and Glamarine feature swimmers suspended between sea and sky, using impossible ascent and choreographed levitation to explore longing, desire, perception and belief. Across her practice, Schek is interested in how images can operate as both psychological spaces and constructed worlds.
Schek’s work has been recognised through the Young Masters Focus on the Female Art Created During Lockdown Award (2021), the W4th Plinth Award (2023), First Prize in the Young Masters People’s Choice Award (2025), and a Highly Commended recognition from the Rudolph Blume Foundation Acquisition Award. As winner of the W4th Plinth Award, her 4×4m public artwork The Ceiling In The Sky was unveiled by Dame Siân Phillips, succeeding Sir Peter Blake’s inaugural display in the rolling public art programme curated by Abundance London. She has exhibited internationally at major art fairs and in museum exhibitions in London, and her work is held in private collections in the UK, Europe and the United States.
Selected critical response
Art critic Estelle Lovatt FRSA describes Schek as “in a league of her own,” creating “incredible visual adventures” that pilot vision between reality and imagination, and has coined the term “Surreal Neo-Romantic Universalism” in response to the work. In Lovatt’s reading, Schek “bends Einstein and Newton,” questioning what is factual through what is make-believe, and making “new artwork fairytales for grownups.” She also identifies the work as a departure from the old portrait tradition of the female muse, describing Schek’s practice as “assertive, bold, visionary.”
Diving Upwards Series (2022-2026)
“Everything real begins with the fiction of what could be. Imagination is therefore the most potent force in the Universe. Imagination is ‘Diving Upwards’.” Cristina Schek
In Diving Upwards, Schek stages swimmers in acts of impossible ascent, suspended between water and sky. The series explores imagination as a force of transformation, where elegance, resilience, and belief rise together against gravity. Estelle Lovatt FRSA describes the series as a realm of “incredible visual adventures” where dream, symbolism and aspiration converge.
"In my mind’s eye, I see carefully choreographed women and the sky-high lunar cycle of the Moon being celebrated. For (e)very good reason. The Moon’s gravity stabilises us. This image is an inspirational message; dream big and take chances. More than synchronised swimmers or water ballerinas, it’s Sisyphus rolling with huge stones as big as your troubles. Push giant rocks up the steep incline of life symbolising suffering, heaven forbid heaven bound, because you are strong enough. To wear a Titian-like shade of red swimsuit and bathing cap, a figure hugging skin-tight illusion of being naked, almost. Surely. Rise up, propel yourself high. Believe. Nothing. Nothing is in the way to stop you. We are all capable of being top flyers, diving upwards and flippin’ hell. Being over the moon… The saying “Over the Moon” is used to describe how it feels when feeling extremely pleased and very, very, happy. Skyrocket, soar, fly. The sky isn’t the limit, since man walks on the moon, right? Right! More than a picture-maker, Schek is a visual influencer." Estelle Lovatt FRSA
Diving Upwards Miniatures
A collection of three miniature works framed in jewel-like antiques, created in celebration of 100 Years of Surrealism. Inspired by André Breton’s Surrealist cabinet of curiosities, these intimate pieces act as small portals between imagination and reality.
‘Diving Upwards’ Series – Glamour Edit
In Glamarine (2025), Schek revisits her divers through a more refined and stylised register. These swimmers rise toward the light, suspended between sea and sky in works that bring together glamour, beauty and the fiction of ascent.
V&A Museum Director's Circle
Florence Balcombe Stoker: The Woman Who Protected Dracula | Artsy Viewing Room
Made in Bed Sotherby's Institute of Art | Alexis Kleeman in conversation with Cynthia Valianti Corbett
Artpil | Line of Beauty Young Masters People’s Choice Award Winners
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