Between Silence and Surface Brings Ukrainian and British Art Together in London

A Ukrainian and British Artist Are Examining the Limits of the Human Portrait in a New London Exhibition

Between Silence and Surface opens at 49 Linden Gardens on 18 May, bringing together the work of Alina Pyatnova and Anthony-Noel Kelly in a show about what happens when a face refuses to be seen.

Ukrainian multidisciplinary artist Alina Pyatnova, who works under the name Limpika Lilac, and British painter and sculptor Anthony-Noel Kelly are rarely the kind of names you would expect to find in the same room. The exhibition that opens in Notting Hill on 18 May makes a case for why that juxtaposition is exactly the point.

Between Silence and Surface. The Appearance of Skin runs until 30 June at 49 Linden Gardens, presented by Ukrainian Art House in London in partnership with the Association of Ukrainians in Great Britain and the Shevchenko Library and Archive, with support from the Embassy of Ukraine in the United Kingdom. The curators, Tetiana Bairaka, Ludmila Pekarska and Nataliia Horbenko, describe it not as a dialogue between two traditions but as a collision between two extremes of what portraiture can do.

Pyatnova's work pushes in one direction. Her two series, Shiny Dolls and SHE / Porcelain Flesh, render skin with a luminous, glazed smoothness she has spent years developing. Up close, the surface becomes almost hermetic. Too smooth, too resolved, pressing itself at the viewer. Kelly goes the other way entirely. His figures resist being seen at all. Contours stay unresolved. The image begins to withdraw before the eye can fix it.

His series Ambassadors, nineteen oil portraits of practising members of the world's major faiths, was developed over a decade and is intended not to be sold but donated to a religious cause. Kelly's work has been exhibited widely since a 1998 conviction for theft from the Royal College of Surgeons brought him significant public attention.

Together the two practices ask the same question from opposite ends. Can portraiture still hold a presence when it either vanishes or becomes too dense to look at?

A programme of talks and artist events will accompany the exhibition, including a live joint painting demonstration by both artists.

Open Monday to Friday, 11am to 5pm, closed weekends and bank holidays. Private views on Thursday 21 May, 6 to 8:30pm, and Tuesday 9 June, 5 to 7:30pm.

More information at ukrainianarthouse.uk.