Crush Fanzine have asked Leo Babsky to compile an isolation playlist for them. It’s up on their blog now along with a link to the Spotify playlist, click here to read.

Playlist To Allow Yourself To Be Sad To: 

Ian William Craig : An End Of Rooms

Apparat : Black Water (DJ Koze remix)

Brocker Way : The Burning Gats

Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds : Distant Sky (feat. Else Torp)

Codeine : Pea

KINDNESS. 10.10.20. Sook Space, London.

Curated by Alter-Projects and LB~Curatorial for Bauer Media to mark World Mental Health Awareness Day.

Artists and Designers: Ania Catherine and Dejha Ti, Another Artist, Ben Channon, Bethan Laura Wood, Chica Seal, Emily Forgot, Mimei Thompson, Morag Myerscough, Orlando Broom, Philippe Malouin, Rasha Kahil, Sebastian Bergne, Teresa Eng, Theodora Alfredsdottir, The Good Thing in collaboration with Gonzalo Herrero, Trystan Williams, Richard Woods, Yuri Suzuki.

To celebrate the festive season LB ~ Curatorial partners again with The ICA to offer this Nick Relph print at the discounted rate of £160 (from £200).

Wishing all our clients and associates a happy, prosperous and peaceful 2019!

LB Curatorial and Century Club are delighted to partner with Frestonian Gallery to present an exhibition of works by Sir Eduardo Paolozzi (1924-2005). Born in Edinburgh, Paolozzi became a titan of British and international art in the second half of the 20th Century. Popularly considered one of the true founders of Pop Art, he continued to innovate as well as inspire other artists throughout his long and extraordinary life.

The works at Century Club focus in particular his prolific print-making practice – and include several editions referring directly to his much-celebrated murals at nearby Tottenham Court Road Station – which have recently been the subject of a huge conservation project by TFL’s Art On The Underground.

Paolozzi was knighted in 1989 and has been the focus of major institutional solo exhibitions at, amongst others, the Victoria & Albert Museum; National galerie, Berlin; the Royal Academy; and most recently this year at The Whitechapel Gallery. His work is held in most major western public collections, including MOMA, the Tate Gallery and the National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh. 

Leo Babsky is interviewed by Maria Stenfors for the Century Club website on his role as head curator for the club and his work with LB ~ Curatorial.

Read the article HERE

Congratulations to all selected artists for CONTEMPORARY VISIONS 8, chosen by a panel including Leo Babsky of LB~ Curatorial.

Please join us for the opening reception on 11th January 2018, 6 - 9pm at Beers London,  1 Baldwin Street, EC1V.

Italian fashion brand Fabiana Filippi invited art advisory group LB ~ Curatorial to curate an artist presentation in their London, Conduit Street store resulting in an installation of British artist Tim Ellis’ paintings and small sculptural works.

Ellis’ practice examines the process whereby art and craft objects from one culture come into close contact with another. This coming together leads to both an exchange in value and shift in meaning. 

Conducting in-depth research into cultural products, how they are made, used and displayed; sometimes using found objects and other times abstracting from pre-existing designs, these are transformed by Ellis to form totemic sculptures and paintings. 

Ellis’ series ‘United in Different Guises’ is a prime example of this process, featuring a number of paintings that are folded, scuffed and hung by bulldog clips. 

Taking on the look of textiles recovered from ancient or forgotten republics and reminiscent of militaristic banners or flags.

Loaded with cultural and historical significance and using a variety of source imagery, ranging from advertising and design magazines to artistic movements such as Art Nouveau. The artist explains; ’I collect vast amounts of images and design motifs into a glossary for potential use’, I draw my own designs inspired by them. The colours are chosen in a similar manner, but are intuitively worked and changed for each painting’.

What Ellis creates amounts to a subversion and questioning of symbolism and authenticity which appears to defy chronological or cultural classification.

The craftsmanship evident in Ellis' works reflect the passion for traditional working techniques and focus on the finest raw materials that are inherent to the ethos of the Fabiana Filippi brand.

The presentation is on view from 30th November 2017 until January 6th 2018.

11.01.18

Leo Babsky is a jury member for Contemporary Visions 8, the annual open call exhibition for contemporary artists held at Beers London.

The exhibition will open on 11th January 2018. 

22.09.16

Mela Yerka
Liaisons

Mela Yerka's paintings capture a series of 19th Century women — aristocrats, writers, actresses, models and courtesans — linked through an intricate web of liaisons.

The likes of George Sand, Delfina Potocka, Lola Montez, or Rachel Felix have gained names for themselves in history. Yet, to achieve this in the male- dominated world of the 19th century the women had to navigate through sex, affairs, intrigue, politics and deception. They often paid a high price for challenging the rules of the time: social ostracism, moral persecution, public ridicule, even imprisonment or death. Each of the women craved personal freedom and social appreciation, but in pursuit of it had to rely on male lust and love.

For this exhibition, 15 paintings will be installed individually and in clusters spreading the network of the women throughout the space. These paintings are not portraits of these women as such. Instead, they are the artist’s interpretation of the myths and facts of the woman in each painting. By the varied use of media and style, through pigments, marble dust and paints, each woman’s history is spelled out on the canvas in front of us. The works explore the cultural resonation of those depictions of individuals and stories — that nonconformist women from 150 years ago became an embodiment of individualism. 

08. 01. 16

Julia Pfeiffer
Sets and Renderings

A solo exhibition of Berlin based artist Julia Pfeiffer’s photographic montages. Staged in the artist’s studio, Pfeiffer’s works offer up spaces that muddy the relations between objects and the spatial fields they inhabit. Items both real and drawn float in and out of focus along with fragments referring to both useless and usable objects, highlighted by Pfeiffer's use of long shutter speed - recording motion and allowing for shifts in light sources, thus underlining the dream like spaces her works inhabit.

23. 04. 16

Implicit Image

A three-artist show with works from Samantha Donnelly, Sarah Hardacre and Leo Babsky.

Each artist in ‘Implicit Image’ explores the found image whilst bending it to his or her will, contorting it into new landscapes whilst acknowledging the original images’ innate power.

The aspirational lure of soft-porn and fashion imagery is harnessed by the featured artists allowing them to create highly seductive works which also point to the sometimes dangerous and un-realistic values these images portray. 

To mark the occasion of Frieze London 2018 we are delighted to offer LB ~ Curatorial clients a special 20% discount on this brand new Gary Hume edition from our friends at The ICA. 

See details below:

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The Institute of Contemporary Arts is pleased to present this edition produced exclusively for the ICA by Gary Hume.

Gary Hume is one of Britain’s most highly respected painters. 

He is among the internationally celebrated group of Young British Artists that studied at Goldsmiths, University of London in the late 1980s. Hume’s highly distinctive compositions are marked by an innovative use of colour, line and surface.

The edition presented here is based on the painting of the same name, which Hume produced as part of Mum, his 2017 solo show at Sprüth Magers, London. Taking the image of the lamb as the 

central point, the edition is a meditation on innocence and spirituality, placing these qualities in dialogue with the violence of human existence. 

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To take advantage of this offer or for further information please email mail@lbcuratorial.net 

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This offer will be valid until the end of October.

Institute of Contemporary Art Editions Portfolios

LB ~ Curatorial worked with The Institute of Contemporary Arts on an exclusive discount for Century Club members to purchase ICA Artists’ Editions portfolios.

Seven different portfolios have been carefully curated to bring together works by some of the world’s leading artists. Each portfolio is an edition of five, and is packaged in a bespoke, two colour screen-printed case designed by Stuart Bertolotti-Bailey.

The artists whose work feature in the portfolios include; Cory Arcangel, Carol Bove, Andrea Büttner, Ryan Gander, Gabriel Kuri, Rosalind Nashashibi, Francis Upritchard and many more.

Priced at £1000, ICA is exclusively offering Century Club members a discount of 15% on each portfolio for a limited time only.

For details on each individual portfolio please see: 

https://www.ica.art/store/editions

If you are interested in this offer or require further information please contact leo@centuryclub.co.uk 

To mark London’s annual Frieze Art Fair, Century are delighted to present an ambitious group exhibition in collaboration with Castor Projects. Castor is an exciting contemporary art gallery based in South London, presenting 7 - 8 solo exhibitions per year by emerging to mid career artists.

The exhibition spans both main exhibition spaces within the club plus the entrance and various stairway spaces.

At the entrance visitors are met with two paintings by Derek Mainella, his large oil painted canvases hint at abstracted figures with their cartoon like cut out eyes.                      Mainella’s paintings occupy the space between the digital and the physical, through the use of photoshop and the prod and swipe of various apps used for their conception. The canvas take a nod to modernist painterly acts such as slices and colour fields, yet uses them to depict novelty faces in a world of consumption.

The Tap Room brings together works with a focus on the representation and photographic by Kate McMillan, Sarah Bernhardt, Alan Magee & Derek Mainella.

Kate McMillan is interested in the linking narratives of forgetting and place, often focusing on the residue of the past. Her artworks thus act as haunting memory-triggers for histories and ideas that are over-looked.                                                                                                                    Sarah Bernhardt makes culturally and philosophically expansive work that is aesthetically subtle and often purely gestural. Employing loaded materials that come with their own cultural and historical importance, she works with lm, installation and sculpture to trace around these histories while critically evaluating their foundation.                                                                                                                Alan Magee's works often addressing issues that arise from the politics of power, labour and control, Magee’s playful, often absurdist compositions juxtapose bodies and objects, high art, and everyday life. The artist’s rendering of domestic objects take on powerful symbolism as the markers of the human condition.

Whilst works in the Club Lounge explore abstract forms with a sense of materiality, often produced through industrial processes, featuring Claire Baily, Alan Magee & Jack West.

Claire Baily’s work celebrates much of the Art Deco movement, embracing technology to produce finely crafted components. However with Baily’s work, the parts are much more than mere ornamentation. They are not popular motifs either; they are essential elements of Baily’s particular vocabulary.

Jack West crosses the virtual with the mechanical with his CGI video works and sculptures. His works could be seen as elements to a machine, cogs in a chain, pushing, pulling, hitting, sorting, sweeping. Born from a process of heavy industry, cut by lasers from metal sheets only to end up in a life of static redundancy. Poised for action but still somehow limp.

Across various Stairway spaces are works by Ben Jamie.

Ben Jamie’s inspiration comes from many sources, be it studio detritus, fly tipping, trans humanism, conspiracy theories or fast food, and although based somewhere in reality, the paintings are fairly undisturbed by the real world. 

The exhibition runs from 7th October 2017 - 13th January 2018

20.03.17

Mark Melvin
And SO ON....

In Mark Melvin’s solo presentation And SO ON…. , the artist has curated a body of predominantly text-based light, drawing and kinetic works whose overall agenda is to question our relationship with time. Whether presenting us with the passing of time, or questioning our past, present and future, the pieces on display share the same intention to arrest us at the moment of encounter with the work and focus us on the here and now.

The viewer is guided through the exhibition through a succession of reiterative memorials in a variety of media. They echo one another; a constant reminder of the passing of time and our aspirations, regrets and memories in relation to it. 

Our momentary existence within a new ‘time’ - directed by Melvin - is contextualized by the surrounding philosophical concepts: locking us into a reflection upon the inexplicable, the existential and the mundane.

22.11.16

Samantha Donnelly
Excess Inventory

LB Curatorial and Century Club are proud to present 'Excess Inventory’, a solo presentation of works by Samantha Donnelly.

Donnelly’s work has a filmic, feminine way of posing its subject matter; elusive, disparate and slippery, commenting on both the popular image of femininity and wider issues of beauty standards and the beauty industry that surrounds and feeds these standards.

 Her practice is underpinned by references to art history and popular culture - specifically photography, TV, film and advertisements. Working with the debris of consumer culture- cheap designer knock- offs or glossy magazine lifestyle advertisements- Donnelly makes us question these cultural signifiers and the apparatus behind them. 

19. 04 . 16

ICA Artists' Editions 

The ICA approached us to curate an exhibition of their Artists Editions across Century Members Club, with all sales benefiting the ICA’s program. Including works from AA Bronson, Bjarne Melgaard, Daniel Sinsel, Francis Upritchard, Juergen Teller and Rosalind Nashashibi.

14. 03. 16

Five Floors, Eighteen Artists

Our first exhibition for Century Members Club. Designed to re-set the art program for the club with over 50 individual works from 18 recent graduate and emerging artists hung in a salon style over the entire club.