Art Miami 2022

Back from Florida, my team and I are deeply thankful for the amazing week we've had at Art Miami 2022! We feel energised and inspired after receiving such positive feedback, exchanging ideas and reconnecting with our supporters, collectors, art world colleagues and artists.
The response to our curation has been overwhelming, including a near sell-out show for artist Andy Burgess and finding wonderful new homes for gallery artists Deborah Azzopardi, Klari Reis, Fabiano Parisi and Christina Benz.

We are particularly pleased with the many acquisitions of the gorgeous works of our Young Masters Alumni Artists Cristina Schek, Eve de Haan, Amy Hughes, Kgole and Freya Bramble-Carter & Florence St. George.

‘America has Lichtenstein, we have Azzopardi!’ - Estelle Lovatt FRSA

Deborah Azzopardi acquired worldwide fame for her joyous Pop Art images she has created over the past 35 years. Her unique and feminine take on contemporary art is best described by the esteemed art critic Estelle Lovatt: ‘America has Lichtenstein, we have Azzopardi!’ Lovatt goes on to comment: “Sometimes you just want to curl up under a blanket. With a good book. A piece of chocolate. A man. This is what Deborah Azzopardi’s pictures make me feel like doing. They are me. They remind me of the time I had a red convertible sports car. I had two, actually. And yes, they are you, too. You immediately, automatically, engage with the narrative of Azzopardi’s conversational visual humour. Laughter is the best aphrodisiac, as you know. ... There’s plenty of art historical references from... Manet’s suggestive ‘Olympia’; Boucher’s thought-provoking... ‘Louise O’Murphy’ and Fragonard’s frivolous, knickerless, ‘The Swing’.... Unique in approach, you easily recognise an Azzopardi picture. ... Working simple graphics and toned shading (for depth), the Pop Art line that Azzopardi sketches is different to Lichtenstein’s. Hers is more curvaceous. Feminine.”

The world is familiar with Azzopardi’s artworks, as many of them have been published internationally. Her original paintings, such as the Habitat ‘Dating’ series (2004/08), the iconic ...One Lump Or Two? (2014) and Love Is The Answer (2016), created by the artist at the request of Mitch and Janis Winehouse as a tribute to their daughter, are in great demand. This year Azzopardi was commissioned to create two works celebrating the late Queen Elizabeth’s Platinum Jubilee. The first, making use of platinum leaf, silver leaf, and diamond dust, presents an image of the young queen rendered in symbols of her long reign. The second, an image of Her Majesty’s coronation shoe done in silver and gold leaf, celebrates the design by Roger Vivier which allowed her to endure the 3-hour coronation.

Deborah Azzopardi is represented internationally by Cynthia Corbett Gallery.

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. A new series of paintings on panel and canvas colourfully re-imagines iconic modernist and contemporary houses. 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.’

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.

Andy Burgess has been represented internationally by Cynthia Corbett Gallery since 2004.

Klari Reis uses the tools and techniques of science in her creative process, constantly experimenting with new ways to apply materials and methods. She is driven by curiosity and her desire to explore and document the natural and unnatural with a sense of wonder and joy. Formally trained as an architect, the artist from her base in San Francisco (in proximity to one of the largest concentrations of life science/technology companies in the world) collaborates with local biomedical companies and is inspired by the cutting edge of biological techniques and discoveries.

The unifying theme of Klari Reis’s art is her mastery of a new media plastic, epoxy polymer, and the fine control she brings to its reactions with a variety of dyes and pigments. Her compositions display brightly coloured smears, bumps and blobs atop aluminium and wood panels. A skilled technician with a studio for a laboratory, Reis uses science in the service of her art.

Klari Reis's work has been exhibited worldwide and public collections include Microsoft Research in Cambridge, UK; Next World Capital’s offices in San Francisco, Paris, and Brussels; MEG Diagnostic Centre for Autistic Children in Oxford, UK; Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children in London; the Stanford University Medical Center Hoover Pavilion in California; and Elan Pharmaceuticals, Genentech, Acetelion and Cytokinetics in South San Francisco.

Klari Reis is represented internationally by Cynthia Corbett Gallery.

In a contemporary art world that condemns beauty as camouflage for conceptual shallowness, championing high aesthetics is nothing short of rebellion. Dutch photographer Isabelle Van Zeijl takes female beauty ideals from the past, and sabotages them in the context of today. As a women she experiences prejudices against women; misogyny in numerous ways including sex discrimination, belittling/violence against women and sexual objectification. Van Zeijl aestheticises these prejudices in her work to visually discuss this troubling dichotomy, presenting a new way of seeing female beauty. An oppressive idealisation of beauty is tackled in her work through unique female character and emotion.

Van Zeijl is invested in her images. By using subjects that intrigue and evoke emotion, she reinvents herself over and over and has created a body of work to illustrate these autobiographical narratives. Her work takes from all she experiences in life - she is both model, creator, object and subject. Going beyond the realm of individual expression, so common in the genre of self-portraiture, she strives to be both universal and timeless, with a subtle political hint.

Isabelle Van Zeijl has shown work continuously and internationally over the past fifteen years, represented by galleries located in The UK, USA, The Netherlands, Belgium, and exhibiting at emerging and established international art fairs in New York, Miami, Los Angeles, Hong Kong, London, Germany, Belgium, Sweden and Italy. She was nominated for the Prix De La Photographie Paris, and The Fine Art Photography Awards. She was also one of the winners of The Young Masters Emerging Women Art Prize, London. Her work is held in private & public collections in the USA, UK, Belgium, Germany, France and The Netherlands.

Isabelle Van Zeijl is represented internationally by Cynthia Corbett Gallery.

UK-born Matt Smith is well known for his site-specific work in museums, galleries and historic houses. Using clay, textiles and their associated references, he explores how cultural organisations operate using techniques of institutional critique and artist intervention. He is interested in how history is a constantly selected and refined narrative that presents itself as a fixed and accurate account of the past and how, through taking objects and repurposing them in new situations, this can be brought to light. Of particular interest to him is how museums can be reframed into alternative perspectives.

"What museums collect, and what this tells us about what society deems important, is an ongoing fascination to me. Recent events have shown how important objects, and particularly sculpture, are in the national debate about who we are and how we got here. I have worked with museums many times over the last decade and I love interpreting and curating works to help the widest possible audience feel welcomed and visible within the museums," – Smith says.

In 2015/2016, Matt was Artist in Residence at the Victoria and Albert Museum. In 2009 he received the ARC Award for Craft from Aspex Gallery and was awarded the inaugural Young Masters Maylis Grand Ceramics Prize in 2014. At Collect 2018, he was awarded "Object of the Show" by Ekow Eshun. For Collect 2020, Cynthia Corbett and Matt Smith co-curated a site-specific installation featuring textiles and black parian works. The curation was extremely well-received, and Matt was awarded the inaugural Brookfield Properties Crafts Council Collection Prize, which allowed the Crafts Council to purchase six artworks for the Council's collection. The V&A Museum's Design and Textiles department also acquired one of Matt's subversive embroideries. In June 2020 the Gallery’s long-standing partner Contemporary Art Society has acquired twelve ceramic and tapestry works by Matt Smith. This acquisition became a central focus for the displays at the Hove Museum. This exciting project was possible due to the Contemporary Art Society’s Rapid Response Fund in partnership with Frieze London, which is a new initiative supporting artists and museums during the Covid-19 pandemic. 2021 and 2022 saw Matt Smith’s textile and ceramic artworks join the collection of National Museums Northern Ireland.

Matt regularly exhibits his work at public collections including Coming Out, Walker Art Gallery 2017, A Place at the Table, Pallant House, 2014; Subversive Design, Brighton Museum and Art Gallery, 2013; DIY A Revolution in Handicrafts, Society for Contemporary Craft, Pittsburg, 2010.

Matt Smith started his career at the V&A before developing exhibitions at the Science Museum and the British Film Institute. After retraining as a ceramicist, his work has often taken the form of hybrid artist/curator. His large-scale solo shows have addressed themes including the legacy of colonisation in Losing Venus (Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford) and Flux: Parian Unpacked (Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge), LGBT visibility in Queering the Museum (Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, 2010) and Other Stories (Leeds University Art Collection, 2012). Matt co-directed and curated Unravelling the National Trust which saw over thirty artists working with contemporary craft (including himself) commissioned to respond to the histories of the National Trust properties Nymans House, Uppark House and The Vyne. Matt holds a practice-based PhD from the University of Brighton. The PhD explored the use of craft techniques in contemporary art by artists exploring identities. He is Professor of Ceramics and Glass at Konstfack University of the Arts, Stockholm and Honorary Fellow at the University of Leicester’s School of Museum Studies. His work is held in the collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Walker Art Gallery, Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery and the Fitzwilliam Museum as well as numerous private international collections.

Matt Smith is internationally represented by Cynthia Corbett Gallery

Yuko Nishikawa creates a fantastical environment with her colourful, textural lively forms. With a hands-on, exploratory approach, she makes paintings, lighting, mobiles and sculptures using a variety of mediums including clay, wire, fabrics, as well as repurposed materials such as recycled paper and used eyewear lenses.

Her work reflects her accumulative experiences in architecture, restoration, interior and furniture design, crafts and engineering. Growing up in a small seaside town just south of Tokyo, Japan, Nishikawa received her B.F.A. in Interior Design from New York’s Fashion Institute of Technology in 2002. Since then, she has surveyed courthouses, hospitals and federal buildings; documented the Guggenheim Museum’s facade for the restoration project in 2008; and assisted in hospitality and residential interior design projects for some of NYC’s leading studios such as Clodagh, Bilhuber Inc. and Alexandra Champalimaud.

She currently works in her studio in the industrial area in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, NY, which she built out with friends utilising demolished materials found in the building.

Yuko Nishikawa comments on her ‘Memory Tourist’ installation:

“Memory Tourist combines part of my recent installations with new work, whose wire forms create line drawings in the air and connect colorful and airy repurposed paper “Cookies” which move in response to us when we walk by them and stir the air. To make these Cookies, I collect used photo-background paper from artists and photographers in my Brooklyn studio building. I break it down to pulp, and formulate it with bookbinders' glue into an air-dry clay. The rich colors come directly from the colors of the donated paper; there are no added paints or pigments. I mix pulps the way I would mix paints to make additional colors and effects, by blending blue pulp and red pulp to make a purple clay, for example. Mushy pulps make homogeneous colors, while crumbly pulps have a stippled effect. Finely blended pulps form a smoother surface like macaroons while coarser pulps become bumpier like oatmeal cookies.Over the last year I made mobiles for specific times and places, first for Cape Cod in May, then next for Vermont in November, this Spring for different neighborhoods in my hometown Brooklyn, and then this Summer for San Francisco. Through my traveling for these installations I began to think of the memory of the material - the paper. It retains the colors and the fibers it originally had in these mobiles, whose elements interact with one another as they swing, recreate relationships, and then part ways, like those who visit a place for pleasure.”

Elaine Woo MacGregor is a Scottish-born Chinese artist trained in the Glasgow School of Art. She graduated with a Bachelors Degree with honours, acquired a studio and began working as a full-time artist. MacGregor began to be noticed as a serious and thoughtful painter and her first solo exhibition was 'Portraits' in Glasgow.

Elaine Woo MacGregor's work encapsulates the world seen through the eyes of a cross-cultural artist. She uses eclectic mark making and imagery to create atmospheric and theatrical scenes. Although her painted stories are often fictitious, elements of the picture are based on real people, places and things. Elaine Woo MacGregor’s narrative is drawn from everyday life, dreams, films, and folklore. She works in the domestic tradition of great women artists like Berthe Morisot to Paula Rego.

Elaine Woo MacGregor has exhibited in galleries in Edinburgh, Glasgow, London, Cambridge and abroad. One of her works - 'Hotel No.4' - is in the public galleries collection, the Atkinson Art Gallery, Southport. MacGregor's work has been shown in the U.K, U.S.A, Australia and Thailand and critically recognised by virtue of the Dewar Arts Award, the James Torrance Memorial Award, the Hope Scott Trust Award and the Cross Trust Fund.

Elaine Woo MacGregor is internationally represented by Cynthia Corbett Gallery since 2022.