Una Ursprung was born in Taiwan and now lives and works in Basel, Switzerland. Following Nature, will be Una’s first ever solo show in the UK, following her inclusion in our #LockdownEditions initiative during the first lockdown in 2020.

Her work features a combination of oil painted serene and calm natural imagery with contrasting and sometimes chaotic abstract shapes rendered in spray paint directly over the top. The interplay between these two approaches to mark-making gives her work an ethereal feeling of separation: the canvas is both a portal to another world and a plane on which the abstract gestures are captured. It is as if the window through which we gaze upon these scenes of nature has been vandalised, and we are viewing outwards from within. Perhaps trapped.

The landscapes are earthy and subtle, and the gestures on top playfully vibrant. The interaction created is one of disquiet, as if the idyllic environment harbours something else. We are not viewing a utopian landscape but one that is perhaps more real and more honest.

This suggestion of the boundary places us very much behind the glass, as if we are the exhibits looking outward, gazing upon nature from inside our disordered and vandalised world. Humanity’s position as the blight upon the environment is especially noticeable in 2021 – the year of pandemics, flash floods, and wildfires. In creating these timeless yet immediately relevant works Una is forcing the viewer to look beyond the beauty we see around us, and to question what effect we are having upon it.

It’s been a wild ride these last 4 years. From our very humble beginnings that were curating a single show in a Whitechapel basement, Delphian has become something bigger and better than we ever could have imagined.

We started the gallery with no real goal in mind for where it might end up. We had no business plan, no marketing team, and no outside investment – and we still don’t.

Delphian was the result of a sincere passion for art, and a desire to use our own creativity to organise ways in which the amazing artists and artists we were discovering could be seen by the public, and nothing more.

Since then we have been very fortunate to have curated 20 exhibitions including sell out shows with Igor Moritz, Florence Hutchings, Jordy Kerwick and Bertrand Fournier. Alongside these we have curated large-scale solo and group exhibitions including Antisocial Isolation at The Saatchi Gallery. Our first book Navigating The Art World: Professional Practice For The Early Career Artist was released in 2020 and is now blowing our minds by being available in crazy places such as the Tate Galleries and Waterstones bookshop.

Our first semi-permanent space opened in Covent Garden this summer, and we have an intense schedule of back-to-back shows planned between now and winter. As well as a few external shows including this year’s Delphian Open Call, which is hosted in partnership with Unit 1 Gallery | Workshop in West London.

This current show brings together some familiar names with whom we have worked in the past, as well as some new faces that we look forward to working with in the future.

Rhiannon’s new body of work deals with the different faces of femininity that she perceives in the world around her today, and the restrictive and uncomfortable boundaries that are inflicted on people by cultural paradigms of gender.

Rhiannon’s source material comes from a multitude of mass media, from contemporary sources (such as social media) to fine art and vintage magazines. 

Through her distortion and abstraction of these images she is exploring representations and structures of femininity as it is presented to us. Her works deconstruct notions of the feminine, as well as critique the structures that reinforce paradigms of representation.

The works have all been created with her signature approach of pouring and painting, giving the works a textured and visceral feel that is both beautiful and grotesque. Melting surfaces and anamorphic forms blur and distort representation into an almost-overpowering abstraction. Her intuitive and haptic explorations with the medium allows for serendipitous forms and textures to emerge. 

Layers proliferate on top of one another in clusters like bacteria. Apathy and destruction contrast sharply with humour and exploration. There is something unhealthy and viral about the appearance of the paint itself, which is mirrored both in the unhealthiness of the system that presents femininity to us in the way it does, as well as the viral nature of how images are now shared.

The colour palette moves from pale and sickly-sweet pastels through to more violent and bloody pinks, reds, and purples.

These works push further into the boundaries of abstraction and disintegration and are a step further removed from the original source material than her earlier works. In turn they reveal more of the artist’s psyche and have a deeper emotional charge.

Igor Moritz (B. 1996, Poland) is perhaps one of the most exciting early-career artists working today. In 2020 he was listed as one of the most in-demand artists on Artsy, alongside Andy Warhol, Yayoi Kusama, and Jean-Michel Basquiat.

His work focuses on the seemingly ambiguous moments of silence that often come into existence in the presence of the other (and occasionally even with oneself). The presence of these pauses feed the paintings with a sense of uncertainty and anticipation. Moritz uses colour, morphs space, and distorts the emotionally-packed human figures in order to show a clash of their inner and outer life.

He is an artist we have presented in 5 shows since we launched in 2018, and this is his first ever UK solo show. In 2019 we hosted a two person show with Igor Moritz and Kevin Perkins entitled A Long Way From Home, for which he created multiple canvases and works on paper. His large canvas Keeping Time was one of the first to sell in our show Antisocial Isolation at the Saatchi Gallery in London in 2020-21.

His signature technique of conte-on-paper drawings is something that has captivated us at Delphian ever since we came across them, and so when the opportunity to host Igor’s debut UK solo show arose we knew we wanted works on paper. Whilst his oil on canvas works are more theatrical, the works on paper are more spontaneous, voyeuristic, and subtle. The introspective beauty present in these everyday scenes is one of calm quietude, as even when amongst others each subject in these works looks lost to themselves they remain present in their environment.

This particular body of work is his strongest yet, and the way he renders the subjects (often intimate friends of his, as well as himself) in a distorted yet beautiful way calls to mind artists such as Egon Schiele and Henri Matisse. The intimacy with which he depicts these subjects is one that is not afraid of distortion to create (or capture) emotion. In a similar vein to Francis Bacon Moritz captures the rawness of the interaction first, often not compromising this vision even if this renders the subject distorted and unrecognisable to all but Igor himself. His diaristic method of working presents the viewer with a snapshot into the artist’s life, giving us a deeper understanding not only of the work and its inspirations, but also of the artist.

We are excited to host the launch of David Shillinglaw‘s new book “Relax, the universe is expanding”, and an exhibition of new works to accompany it.

David Shillinglaw explores the conflicted, messy human condition: a relentless need for control within a disordered world. His vibrant, vital paintings present a tumultuous system in which natural forms, freely connected words and human features both burst from and are contained within grids, boxes and organised lines.

This book—the most expansive the British artist has published to date—provides an overview of his joyful, exploratory practice. Shillinglaw’s paintings, sketches, and sculptures are brought together with texts that have inspired him, to offer insights into how he navigates his own chaos and tries to make sense of life on Earth.

Since our genesis in 2018, Delphian has occupied a liminal and temporal space in the art world. Operating continuously in online spaces and planning temporary exhibitions from our kitchen. Intermittently, we have raised our heads above the parapet and hosted shows in physical locations, from The Saatchi Gallery to San Francisco. In this way we have created almost 20 exhibitions, including sell out shows from Florence Hutchings, Jordy Kerwick, and more. 

In June 2021, our first bricks-and-mortar space becomes a reality.

Being an artist-run gallery, we wanted to launch a gallery that is for artists and by artists. We identified elements of the artist/gallery relationship that we thought could be improved, and we acted to ensure that we were the type of gallery that worked for the artists, and not at the expense of them.

In 2020 as a response to the Covid19 pandemic we launched two initiatives to support artists during these trying times, firstly our Lockdown Editions project, for which released a new print each week for the duration of the first lockdown without taking a cut of the profits. In a time when the government was abandoning the arts and artists needed money more than ever, we raised over £20,000 for artists and didn’t take a share. The second project was our debut book Navigating The Art World: Professional Practice for the Early Career Artist, which can now be bought from book shops worldwide, including The Tate Gallery, the Saatchi Gallery, The Royal Academy, Waterstones, Foyles, and many more.

For six months this summer we will be taking over two floors of a grade 2 listed building designed by J.M. Brydon on Henrietta Street in Covent Garden, and hosting for the first time back-to-back shows continuously. Expect solo shows and group shows from some familiar Delphian names, as well as others who we have been excited to work with for some time.

Origin is the first of these shows, opening on Monday the 7th of June. It will showcase some of the most exciting artists working today.