Zimbabwe native Kudzanai-Violet Hwami’s engrossing work explores gender, spirituality, and differing cultures. Currently based in London, she crafts paintings that also implement pastels, charcoal, and other materials. Her work has been shown at the Royal Scottish Academy, National Gallery of Zimbabwe, Shonibare Studios in London, and beyond.
“Hwami’s bright, irreverent oil paintings design scenes belonging to a futuristic vision of African life, a fictional utopia filled with creativity and without borders,” the artist says. “Her work is a celebration of Afro-punk, LGBTQ, and internet sub-cultures, shot through with witty political commentary. Having lived in Zimbabwe, South Africa and the UK, she is able to expertly articulate issues around diaspora, displacement and identity, forging universal narratives with an autobiographical touch.”
Last year, the artist received the Clyde & Co Art Award and Cass Art Materials Grant, as well as the Young Achiever of the Year at the Zimbabwean International Women’s Awards.
Oil painter Lindsay Pickett crafts distorted cityscapes that are at times taken from the artist’s dreams. His influences range from Dali and Bosch to sci-fi illustrators like Wayne Barlowe and Jim Burns. The key to crafting these pieces is not just subverting physics, Pickett says, but walking the tightrope of making them somehow convincing.
Austrian painter Peter Gric offers surreal visions of the future, with writhing biomechanical creatures and notes from ancient religious art coursing throughout his paintings. Gric’s work also includes sculpture, bringing his metallic forms to life. Though often constructed in acrylics, gold leaf, and other traditional paints, Gric’s work begins as digital sketches:
Whether on a wall or canvas, you can feel the influences of pop, graffiti culture, advertising, and both high- and low-brow art in 