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Press Release
LISA IVORY: THE NEAR DISTANCE
EXHIBITION DATES Friday 29 May–Friday 26 June 2026
EXHIBITION HOURS Monday–Friday 10am–5pm
ADDRESS Gramercy Park Studios, 25 Great Pulteney Street, Soho, London W1F 9LT
CHARLIE SMITH LONDON is pleased to present The Near Distance, a solo exhibition by British painter Lisa Ivory. Bringing together a new collection of oil paintings — developed in parallel with Ivory’s recent sell-out releases of works on paper with CHARLIE SMITH LONDON × Project Papyrophilia — the exhibition expands the distinctive imaginative world she has cultivated over the course of three decades: a liminal realm inhabited by Wildmen, nude women, skeletal guardians, and hybrid creatures that pass through darkly atmospheric landscapes suspended between folklore, theatre, and dream.
The exhibition’s title refers both to the formal structure of landscape painting and to the illusion of distance itself: the tension between the belief that there is still time ahead and the unsettling awareness that the horizon may be nearer than imagined. Within Ivory’s paintings, landscape becomes a psychological and existential space in which mortality, ritual, desire, and transformation quietly unfold.
Across the exhibition, recurring figures appear in shifting symbolic dramas. Female protagonists encounter Wildmen whose roles oscillate between protector and threat, while skeletal figures resembling Death interrupt scenes with the logic of allegory or fable. Acts of strange ceremony recur throughout: figures wear crowns of tiny bodies and miniature skeletons, workhorses are adorned as though for ritual procession, and shepherds shapeshift between human guardian and spectral sentinel.
Archaic in atmosphere yet psychologically contemporary, Ivory’s paintings stage unstable encounters between the feral and the domesticated, tenderness and menace, devotion and abandonment. Rich in dark humour and symbolic ambiguity, The Near Distance presents painting as a space of existential theatre in which the familiar continually gives way to something stranger and more unknowable.
Lisa Ivory (b. 1966) studied at Saint Martins School of Art, London (BA Hons Fine Art, 1988). Solo exhibitions include Nino Mier Gallery, Brussels; Pamela Salisbury Gallery, New York; CZA, Milan; and CHARLIE SMITH LONDON. Group presentations include Saatchi Gallery, London; Ricco Maresca Gallery, New York; Fabian Lang Gallery, Zurich; and Hastings Contemporary. Her work is held by University of the Arts London, St George’s Medical School Library, and private collections internationally.
The exhibition takes place at Gramercy Park Studios, 25 Great Pulteney Street, Soho, London W1F 9LT and is available to view Monday–Friday 10am–5pm.
Biography
| EDUCATION | ||
| 1985–1988 | BA (Hons) Fine Art (Painting) | Saint Martins School of Art, London |
| SOLO EXHIBITIONS | ||
| 2026 | The Near Distance | CHARLIE SMITH LONDON, London |
| 2024 | Eyes of the Landscape | Nino Mier Gallery, Brussels |
| 2024 | Ruffian On the Stair | Lido Stores, Margate |
| 2024 | Human Flow | CHARLIE SMITH LONDON, London |
| 2024 | Capricci | CZA, Milan |
| 2024 | The Boss of Parties | Pamela Salisbury Gallery, New York |
| 2024 | Heavy Soul | MePaintsMe, Online |
| 2023 | Beasts Beguiled | Museum of Witchcraft and Magic, Boscastle |
| 2020 | Savage Gardens | Pamela Salisbury Gallery, New York |
| 2017 | Vice, Malice, Lust and Cunning | Lubomirov-Angus-Hughes Gallery, London |
| 2015 | Five Paintings | The Three Crowns, London |
| 1989 | Lisa Ivory | Salisbury Arts Centre, Salisbury |
| SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS | ||
| 2026 | MiArt Art Fair | Nino Mier Gallery, Milan |
| 2025 | Unquiet Landscape | Yorkshire Artspace, Sheffield |
| 2025 | Memento Mori (curated by Matt Loughlin) | Andelli Art, Wells |
| 2025 | Minor Attractions | Galarie Fabian Lang, London |
| 2025 | U-Haul Art Fair | Nino Mier Gallery, New York |
| 2025 | Not Too Far, Not Too Close (curated by Willow Art Space UK) | Andrea Festa, Rome |
| 2025 | Pedigree | OHSH Projects, London |
| 2025 | MPM/IRL | MePaintsMe, New York |
| 2025 | Dreamlandia | Sim Smith, London |
| 2025 | Lotus Incognitus | Artvisor, London |
| 2025 | Short Stories | Pamela Salisbury Gallery, New York |
| 2025 | Hecate | Twilight Contemporary, London |
| 2025 | Behind The Order of Things (curated by Sasha Bogojev) | Yusto/Giner, Madrid |
| 2025 | Earthly Bodies of Then, Now & When (curated by Jack Trodd) | BWG, London |
| 2025 | It’s Not Dead, It’s Just Resting | Scott Lawrie Gallery, Edinburgh |
| 2025 | FOG 2025 | Nino Mier Gallery, San Francisco |
| 2025 | Art Geneve 2025 | Fabien Lang Gallery, Geneva |
| 2024 | Fortune Teller | V1 Salon, Copenhagen |
| 2024 | Understory | Pamela Salisbury Gallery, New York |
| 2024 | The Armory Show | Nino Mier Gallery, New York |
| 2024 | Daisy Chains and Summer Rain | ASC Gallery, London |
| 2024 | Echoes | OHSH Projects, London |
| 2024 | Taste | OHSH Projects at Wonzimer, Los Angeles |
| 2024 | Sin Centre | Hannah Barry, London |
| 2024 | Lost and Found | Atom Gallery, London |
| 2024 | …Adrift… | PrimeYarc, Great Yarmouth |
| 2024 | Beauties and Beasts | Veta by Fer Frances, Madrid |
| 2024 | Creatures and Masks | Fabian Lang Gallery, Zurich |
| 2024 | The Last Terminal Volume III | RIB Rotterdam |
| 2023 | Sugarcube III | Lido Stores, Margate |
| 2023 | Looking Like Fire | Sim Smith, London |
| 2023 | Neo-Gothic | OHSH Projects, London |
| 2023 | Beyond the Gaze – Reclaiming the Landscape (curated by Zavier Ellis) | Saatchi Gallery, London |
| 2023 | A Generous Space 3 | Huddersfield Art Gallery, Huddersfield |
| 2023 | Paint Heavy | MePaintsMe, Online |
| 2023 | Un/Related | Ricco Maresca Gallery, New York |
| 2022 | Sugarcube II | Lido Stores, Margate |
| 2022 | Running With Wolves II | 35blumen, Krefeld |
| 2022 | Dark Night Of The Soul (curated by Samuele Visentin) | One Room Gallery, London |
| 2022 | These Times | Making Space Gallery, London |
| 2022 | Post Totem | OHSH Projects, London |
| 2021 | A Generous Space | Hastings Contemporary, Hastings |
| 2021 | Project Papyrophilia (curated by Zavier Ellis) | CHARLIE SMITH LONDON, Online |
| 2021 | Safe Word | Fragment Gallery, Moscow |
| 2020 | Every Day | Terrace Gallery, London |
| 2019 | Two Fold | OA Gallery, Salford |
| 2018 | Mythos | CHARLIE SMITH LONDON, London |
| 2017 | National Original Print Exhibition | Bankside Gallery, London |
| 2017 | Vice, Malice, Lust and Cunning | Lubomirov-Angus-Hughes Gallery, London |
| 2017 | Antennae | Platform Projects, Athens |
| 2016 | National Original Print Exhibition | Bankside Gallery, London |
| 2016 | Hundreds and Thousands | Lubomirov-Angus-Hughes Gallery, London |
| 2015 | The British Connection | Pori Art Museum, Finland |
| 2015 | Five Paintings at The Three Crowns | The Three Crowns, London |
| 2015 | Limited Editions | Lubomirov-Easton, London |
| 2014 | Bad Behaviour | Brixton East Gallery, London |
| 2014 | neo: Print Prize | neo:gallery, Bolton |
| 2014 | The Whole Thing’s Coming Out of the Dark | Angus-Hughes Gallery, London |
| 2014 | Printjam | Art Bermondsey, London |
| 2013 | Void Open | Void Gallery, London |
| 2013 | Untitled Male Id | Angus-Hughes Gallery, London |
| 2013 | Soul Meat | Lion and Lamb Gallery, London |
| 2013 | Temple of the Occult | Norman Rea Gallery, York |
| 2011 | Big Deal Sexy100 (curated by STIMULUS LTD) | Wall to Wall, London |
| 2011 | The Great Alonso | Primo Alonso, London |
| 2011 | City Hobgoblins | Angus-Hughes Gallery, London |
| 2011 | Freaks | Shoreditch Town Hall, London |
| 2011 | The Discerning Eye | Mall Galleries, London |
| 2008 | Sideshow | Primo Alonso, London |
| COLLECTIONS | ||
| University of the Arts London | ||
| St George’s Medical School Library | ||
| Private collections internationally |














