London-based Curator and art advisor Julia Campbell Carter and founder of Octavia Art Gallery, New Orleans, Pamela Bryan are proud to co-present Rhythm in the Blues, a dynamic group exhibition at 14 Percy Street, London, taking place from 11 – 20 May.
In a world of geo-political fracture and uncertainty this exhibition unites and celebrates the creative voices of five acclaimed international contemporary women artists each embodying a distinct multiplicity of nationalities, cultures, perspectives and medium – Alia Ali, Aigana Gali, Azadeh Ghotbi, Naomie Kremer, and Lucille Lewin. The inspiration for the show is the vital importance of art and multi-disciplinary culture and their impact on how we view the world around us.
The works on view combine in a dynamic dialogue about visual tempo, migration, memory and place, forged by an international exchange between two cities steeped in their own rich and multifaceted musicality, New Orleans and London. Rhythm in the Blues is a celebratory showcase, riffing on the artists’ shared commitment to experimentation, and a concern for finding a lively, free and visceral visual language, employing techniques such as prismatic patterns, repetition, harmonies of blue hues and intuitive forms that encourage the viewer to listen with their eyes.
On view are Yemeni Bosnian Alia Ali’s scintillating, trompe l’oeil photographs of figures swathed in highly patterned textiles – Alia’s work carries universal meaning and are a part of our daily lives, no matter where we live or who we are, and that eventually, they enshroud us when we die. Her vibratory works, though visually arresting, are driven by research into her ancestral history. Her work has integrated the permanent collections of The British Museum, Museum of Contemporary Photography Chicago (MoCP), New Orleans Museum of Art (NOMA), and Princeton University, among others. She is a Jameel Fellow at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London.
For the Georgian Kazakh painter Aigana Gali, meanwhile, ancient cosmologies such as Tengrism, inform luminous abstract canvases that evoke the vastness, light and mythic landscapes of the Eurasian Steppe. Her work explores colour, spirituality and human connection to nature through expansive, atmospheric forms. Gali’s paintings, shown internationally - including at the Saatchi Gallery and the Royal Academy of Arts - blend intuitive gesture and movement, like a musician improvising with an instrument.
With a practice based on movement and a multiplicity of perspectives, London-based Iranian American painter and photographer Azadeh Ghobti explores themes of transience and belonging in stunning, abstract, gestural canvases that are deeply rooted in her unique personal experience and keen sense of observation. Her work aims to foster a deeper understanding an empathy for others. She invites us to pause, reflect, look beyond the surface and reveal the beauty in noticing the unseen.
A suite of abstract oil paintings by Israeli-born American artist Naomie Kremer, with their jagged, geometric forms, create a disorienting perceptual experience, an ambiguous atmosphere inviting the viewer to get lost and allow new, free associations to form in the mind. Although largely abstract, Kremer’s imagery draws from the real world, incorporating references to nature, architecture, language, letterforms and the human figure. Her work is informed by art history, music, poetry and literature.
British South African Sculptor Lucille Lewin – formerly, the founder of Whistles and Creative Director of Liberty – creates works that are fractured metaphors for human experience through time. Her seemingly delicate, poetic pieces are personal and political. She models porcelain clay, dips, slips, casts and throws it before it is cut up, pressed, extruded, broken and reassembled, a rigorous process of construction and deconstruction, akin to a composer, building her worse to a gradual crescendo.
This celebration of bold, borderless female creativity is both empowering and enlivening – bringing together distinct yet resonant practices, Rhythm in the Blues celebrates the power of art as a shared language through which these women artists transform rhythm, harmony, sound and ancestral echoes into bold visual expression.
14 Percy Street
London, W1T 1DR
May 11 – 20, 2026