Hosting quarterly exhibitions showcasing our favourite local artist's work
CURRENT EXHIBITION
DAISY DE VILLENEUVE - HAIRDOS
Daisy de Villeneuve, born in London in 1975, is a renowned artist celebrated for her distinctive felt-tip pen illustrations. Half English, half American, she grew up in the English countryside before studying Fashion Design and Fine Art at Parsons School of Design in New York and Paris, earning a BFA in Fine Arts. Her vibrant career has led her to collaborate with prestigious brands like Moët & Chandon, Nike, and Missoni, and her work has been featured in major publications including British Vogue and The New York Times T Magazine. Her global presence is marked by exhibitions in cities such as Tokyo, Milan, and New York, as well as solo shows at notable venues like The Fashion and Textile Museum in London. De Villeneuve has also published whimsical books with Pocko Editions and Chronicle Books, and her illustrations have been commissioned by institutions like the V&A for their publication ‘Fashion Mash-Up’. Her contributions extend to the digital realm as a regular illustrator for the podcast Story + Rain. Her creative excellence has been recognized with a D&AD pencil award. De Villeneuve's latest exhibition, "Hairdos," showcases a series of portraits celebrating hairstyles through the ages, further highlighting her unique artistic voice.
PAST EXHIBITION
SHUMAIYA KHAN - FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH
Shumaiya Khan is an artist, writer and creative. Born 1990, in Bradford, West Yorkshire to a British Bengali family, before moving to London to pursue higher education where she resides to this day. Khan comes from a design-led background, earning her BA Hons in Design from Goldsmiths, University of London. Although she has always painted, she has only fully resumed her art practice in April of 2020. Khan is self-taught and her work has always had an element of experimentation with textures and motion within an abstract framework built to engage emotion within her audience.
Within her earlier critical theory design work, this has translated into recording statistics in visually fluid, quantifiable and measurable ways, via the use of ink, ceramics, and plants. Between 2010 to 2019, Khan’s sole focus was her creative & art direction roles within fashion, homeware and beauty.
Khan produces contemporary abstract expressionist pieces via the use of acrylic, charcoal, chalk, and poetry across canvas and paper. At times, especially with her larger-scale abstract pieces, pigment is worked and layered into pieces over a series of days or weeks. Different viscosities of pigment are considered, adding dimension and rich texture into the vast worlds, solar systems, and oceans she creates. In juxtaposition to her full-colour works, Khan produces fast-paced, raw canvas and paper pieces. Brush strokes and charcoal lines are created at different paces, some with more initially thought-through intention than others. Khan sees the physicality’s of her visual painting language working towards an ever evolving image in her mind.
Khan’s work is based in emotional and metaphysical storytelling. Her practice explores juxtapositions around dynamic behaviours in the sphere of; the relationship with ourselves, feminine expression & sensuality, societal interaction, morality, innate faith & spirituality. Khan often calls upon the viewers to look inside themselves and ask what they feel. She has stated previously that she is compelled to create, being both a meditative and explorative practice for her.
PAST EXHIBITION
LAURENGODFREY - Pattern Portraits
Lauren Godfrey is an artist based in London. She has shown extensively both in the UK and abroad and her work is held in many collections worldwide, including Soho House.
Lauren works across sculpture, drawing and printmaking. Conversation and connection is at the heart of the work, seeking to create dialogue and an atmosphere of joy and generosity. An obsession with postmodern design lends a giddy colour palette and attention to detail in texture and finish. Her work reflects people in abstract means, through their menu choices or the clothing they choose to wear. Recently Lauren’s work has exploded in scale, treating a 30 metre wall at Newham Hospital to an abundance of painted colour or spanning the breadth of Coal Drops Yard with patterned flags.
The Pattern Portrait series celebrates the sartorial choices of individuals and groups of people, exploring how this can empower and bolster. Creating tactile and precise works from Jesmonite, inlaid with brass and Perspex. These speak of the floors of Italian churches or ancient mosaics as much as a kitchen work surface. Blending the high and low of materiality.
The digitally printed hemp flags shown here were part of a large installation of 120 flags at Coal Drops Yard, Kings Cross, forming a giant quilt in the sky in the summer of 2020. The patterns on the flags were created in collaboration with Central Saint Martins and local school students, drawing from patterned textiles special to them. Once the flag installation was taken down, most of the flags were turned into a clothing range by VENTURA/Forman, the rest remained as artworks which you see here at The Lion and The Fox.
Lauren also has a podcast, ‘Pattern Portraits’ interviewing creative visionaries about their patterned clothing.
PAST EXHIBITION
JOHN CACKETT - AcrylIc on Canvas
John Cackett is an artist based in Faversham, Kent. He was born in St Neots in 1947 to a deep sea diving father Ron Cackett, and mother Doris Cackett. He always loved painting and poetry but he soon married, had 5 children and had to focus on his career to support his young family.
He started working in the City of London and was able to build a successful carrer in the insurance industry. On his retirement he decided to return to his real passion – art.
Since then, he has developed a style that is a result of a process which involves his investigation into different forms of artistic endeavour.
Using various art forms, sometimes figurative and more often abstract, he often works without a fixed objective rather following his mood. His body of work is extensive and we are pleased to present a series of his canvases.
