Bow Open x Lindsey Mendick present A Personal Treasure (Live performances)

Nunnery Gallery

7 July - 25 August

Bow Arts’ annual Bow Open Show showcases the talent and diversity of art being made across the charity’s artist community, selected by a guest curator. This year’s curator, visual artist Lindsey Mendick, invited submissions with her provocation “A Personal Treasure”, and has gathered work from 33 artists, various in media and all distinctly precious for sharing a treasured notion.

Laid out in a museum style under the gothic arches of the Nunnery Gallery, the show spans painting, sculpture, ceramics, textiles, video, and millinery, with small objects collected in intimate groups in vitrines. The exhibiting artists include some of Bow Arts’ brightest stars and growing talent, and the show is a chance to explore some of the most exciting art being made across east London.

Suitably eccentric and theatrical, Mendick’s selection of treasures ranges from a wearable Sicilian cassata cake (La Sicilianedde, Micheal Coppelov), a series of tufted swords embellished with ceramic teeth and trinkets (Serious Quarrels, Haydn Albrow), and fantastical sensory worlds drawn on coffee cups (Paul Westcombe). What artists have chosen to share is beautiful, both visually and personally: Cameron Ugbodu’s Das Kind mit den goldenen Knochen steht wieder auf ungebrochen (the child with the golden bones stands up again) gleams with gold and contrasting deep blue, reflecting on transformational reflection; You Liang’s Growing Up is an Animal Trap is a triptych of silvery soldered and printed shapes, delving into the artist’s younger years of growing up as a “Chinese queer individual navigating the complexities of growing up in a conservative town”.

There are also quieter, intimate treasured moments to be found through exquisite painting: Moussa David Saleh’s Nose To Cheek, Maddie Yuille’s A kiss, and Tabitha Powles’s Frog – referencing the treasured possession of a patient Powles cares for as a nurse. Not to be missed, Mendick’s Bow Open invites viewers to explore some of the most exciting work being made in London today through her unique curatorial lens.