Nathalie Du Pasquier
b. 1957, Bordeaux, France

Influenced by the language of classicism and informed by the history of Italian art, Du Pasquier’s paintings splice together simplified still life compositions, architectural plans, industrial drawings, and playful fragments of text with boldly simplified blocks of colour. New objects constantly enrich Du Pasquier’s imaginary and symbolic world and she follows particular, poetic paths to construct and compose forms, sculpt space, and render representation anew. Exploring the links between objects, geometry, representation of space and psychic life, Du Pasquier’s paintings often expand into clustered arrangements or onto the surrounding walls, taking a fluid and porous approach to traditional distinctions between ‘fine’ and ‘decorative’ arts. 

Born in Bordeaux, France, Nathalie Du Pasquier first discovered pattern and texture in West Africa in the 1970s, and has lived in Milan since 1979. A founding member of the Memphis design group, she designed textiles, carpets, plastic laminates, furniture and objects before dedicating herself to painting in 1987. Her work has been exhibited at MACRO, Rome; MRAC, Sérignan; Palais de Tokyo, Paris; Camden Arts Centre, London; Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh; ICA, Philadelphia; Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna; Kunsthal Aarhus, Denmark and Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye in France. Forthcoming exhibitions include Hôtel des Arts, Toulon, France; Apalazzo Gallery, Brescia, Italy (both solo exhibitions, from March 2024); MRAC, Sérignan (group, April 2024); Kunsthaus Biel, Switzerland (two-person show with Olivier Mosset, September 2024). 

Liam Gillick
b. 1964, Aylesbury, England

One of the most important figures in international contemporary art, Liam Gillick works across diverse forms, including sculpture and installation. Gillick’s line of enquiry is into conditions of production, including how it continues to operate in a post-industrial landscape: questions of economy, labour and social organisation are ongoing preoccupations. He is perhaps best known for producing sculptural objects – platforms, screens, models, benches, prototypes, signage, or structural supports made from sleek modular Plexiglas and aluminium forms in standardised colours from the RAL system. These seductive materials speak the language of renovation and development: originally refined by the military, they’ve been widely used in corporate interiors since the 1990s, a decade in which post-industrial societies saw a shift from the collective to the individualist and privatised. Drawing upon engineering and industrial design as well as the legacy of hard-edged minimalism, these abstract quasi-architectural forms offer a critique of neo-liberal or corporate aesthetics, automation and endless (re)development. Focusing on secondary or incomplete forms such as screens and platforms, Gillick pinpoints structures which have the potential to destabilise the power of architecture and the architecture of power, creating generative spaces for discussion or the development of ideas.

Liam Gillick has had solo exhibitions in many of the world’s leading museums, including the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Kunsthalle Zürich; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Palais de Tokyo, Paris; Witte de With, Rotterdam; Kunst-und Ausstellungshalle der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, Bonn; MAGASIN, Grenoble; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Tate Britain, London and IMMA, Dublin. Forthcoming solo exhibitions include Kin, Brussels (from 1 March 2024); current and forthcoming group exhibitions include the 14th Shanghai Biennale: Cosmos Cinema, Power Station of Art, Shanghai (9 November 2023 – 31 March 2024); A Blank Posters Show, La oficina de la nada, The Universidad Andrés Bello of Santiago in Chile (November 2023); and Survival in the 21st Century, Deichtorhallen, Hamburg (April 2024). Recent solo exhibitions include the Pergamon Museum, Berlin (2023); Gwangju Museum of Art, Korea; Sankt Peter, Cologne (both 2021); Madre Museum, Naples; Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna; Kunsthaus Zürich; Neues Museum Nürnberg; Potter Museum, Melbourne (all 2019).

Merlin James
b.1960, Cardiff, Wales

Merlin James approaches the history and legacy of painting with a highly considered and unconventional viewpoint. As commented by Artforum’s Sherman Sam, his work “has sought to rigorously problematise the experience of painting while simultaneously deepening its formal language”. Generally small in scale, his works depict diverse subject matter including vernacular architecture, riverside views, post-industrial landscapes, empty interiors, mysterious figures and scenes of sexual intimacy. His ‘frame paintings’ on gauzy, sheer material treat the structure of the picture frame and stretcher bar as an integral part of the work, while works on canvas might be collaged with tufts of hair or sawdust, distressed, pierced, cropped or heavily overpainted. Also an erudite and thoughtful critic, James has a deep engagement with the history of art and this knowledge shapes and informs his practice. His works refine and renew many of painting’s most time-honoured concerns – genre and narrative, pictorial space and expressive gesture, the emotive resonance of colour and texture.

Merlin James has had numerous solo exhibitions, including at Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge; Venice Biennale, Wales Pavilion; Sikkema Jenkins, New York; KW Institute, Berlin; Kunstsaele, Berlin; CCA, Glasgow; Kunstverein, Freiberg; Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin; OCT, Shunde & Shenzhen; Anton Kern, New York; Philadelphia Art Alliance. Selected international collections include Tate, London; Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris; Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas; Sifang Art Museum, Nanjing, China and National Museum of Wales, Cardiff. In 2023, James had a two-person exhibition, Double Shuffle, with Victoria Morton at Kerlin Gallery, Dublin. The exhibition coincided with the launch of a landmark new publication gathering 40 years of the artist’s work. 

Isabel Nolan
b. 1974, Dublin, Ireland

Isabel Nolan has an expansive practice that incorporates sculptures, paintings, textile works, photographs, writing and works on paper. Her subject matter is similarly comprehensive, taking in cosmological phenomena, religious reliquaries, Greco-Roman sculptures and literary/historical figures, examining the behaviour of humans and animals alike. These diverse artistic investigations are driven by intensive research, but the result is always deeply personal and subjective. Exploring the “intimacy of materiality”, Nolan’s work ranges from the architectural to the handmade. In concert, they feel equally enchanted by and afraid of the world around us, expressing humanity’s fear of mortality and deep need for connection as well as its startling achievements in art and thought. Driven by “the calamity, the weirdness, horror, brevity and wonder of existing alongside billions of other preoccupied humans”, her works give generous form to fundamental questions about the ways the chaos of the world is made beautiful or given meaning through human activity.

Isabel Nolan has been the subject of solo exhibitions at Château La Coste, Aix-en-Provence; Void Gallery, Derry; Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver; Mercer Union, Toronto; London Mithraeum Bloomberg SPACE, London; Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin; the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin; Solstice Arts Centre, Navan; Kunstverein Graz, Austria; Kunstverein Langenhagen, Germany and Musée d’art moderne de Saint Etienne, France. Her work has also been exhibited at Palais de Tokyo, Paris; Salzburger Kunstverein; Centre of Contemporary Art, Geneva; Artspace, Sydney; Talbot Rice Gallery, Edinburgh; Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh; Daejeon Museum of Art, South Korea; Beijing Art Museum of the Imperial City, Beijing; EVA International, Limerick; Glasgow International; and the Irish Pavilion at the Venice Biennale. Forthcoming exhibitions include a two-person exhibition with Aleana Egan at Highlanes Gallery, Drogheda (2024).

Sean Scully
b. 1945, Dublin, Ireland

A world-renowned abstract painter, Sean Scully is one of the leading artists of his generation. He is best known for his impactful and internationally recognisable paintings balancing dynamic bands of colour in rhythmic formulations, capturing tonality, light and mood with great drama and delicacy. His global but deeply personal perspective has seen him absorb the core elements of the visual world – sky, sea, stone – as well as the full spectrum of human pathos, from grief and pain to fatherhood. Scully’s art is highly physical, often monumental in scale and populated by vigorous, robust shape and form, and yet it is also an art of great honesty, intimacy, and even vulnerability. An abstractionist but not a formalist, Scully deploys the power of colour, depth and volume not only to give expression to the world around him, but to provide access to the spiritual domain. In recent years, the artist’s explorations of space and volume have continued into large-scale sculptural works – monumental and megalithic-feeling stone blocks that weigh down on the land, as well as airy structures in Corten steel that open up and interact with the landscape. Across these diverse approaches to making art, Scully utilises a consciously constrained system to open up an energetic multiplicity of aesthetic possibility and emotional range.

Sean Scully has had solo exhibitions in leading museums around the world including, most recently, Houghton Hall, UK (2023); the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia; Thorsvaldens Museum, Copenhagen; MAMbo, Bologna; Museum of Contemporary Art, Zagreb; CSW, Torun, Poland (all 2022); Museum of Modern Art, Fort Worth; Benaki Museum, Athens; Hungarian National Gallery, Budapest (all 2021); Wadsworth Atheneum, Connecticut; the Albertina Museum, Vienna; LWL Museum, Münster; the National Gallery, London; and the Basilica of San Giorgio Maggiore, Venice (all 2019). Current exhibitions include Géographies, Passerelle Centre d’art contemporain, Brest, France (until 13 January) and Artists Choose Parrish, Parrish Art Museum, Long Island, NY, USA (until 18 February).