CURRENT EXHIBITION

MICHAEL AJERMAN : 20MAR-26APR 2025

“CANT YOU HEAR ME KNOCKING”

SQFT: Space Gallery presents Michael Ajerman’s solo exhibition, Can’t You Hear Me Knocking. Presenting recent paintings exploring his visceral use of colour to explore the   human body and animals. These activated depictions permeate interior and exterior environments.

Opening with a private view on March 20th from 6 - 9 PM. 

A conversation event with the Ajerman and the artist Dale Berning Sawa is scheduled for Saturday March 29th at 2PM.  Berning Sawa has written the following captivating text explaining Ajerman’s current body of work. 

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Michael Ajerman once had a gallerist bemoan the frenzy of his works. "Your paintings are so energetic," they said, "we can't put anyone else's work next to yours." The absurdity of that objection notwithstanding, if you did need to choose one word to encapsulate what Ajerman does, like a knot of colour in a glass marble, it would be spiky. Figures and shapes and lines and forces rail against the strictures of any given canvas, suggesting noise and restless muscle, an ever-threatened containment, an explosion inches from exploding.

A few years ago, there was a war on his Camden street. He and his partner, Laura, had gone out for lunch then walked home. Within 20 minutes a roar had them back outside, watching two cats—Grendel and Couscous—going at each other with ferocious intent. Ajerman has come back to that Fight-Club-meets-Attenborough moment repeatedly ever since, mostly because, as he puts it, Grendel has brought him back to painting. See Almost, a rectangle divided on the diagonal across which a twisting felines become a crow or banshee.

A combination of Covid and bone-deep grief at the loss of a close friend sent Ajerman spiralling into a kind of existential crisis, where the reason for painting at all was lost to the chaos of the world. He points to one drawing, which, from this side of his most recent body of work now on show, looks like a new beginning, but at the time only underscored his hopelessness. He'd drawn, unusually for him, inspiration from a news story. In the early days of lockdown, an Italian woman had been videoed  dangling her dog by a long leash from a first-story window so it could do its business while she was confined inside. It was a defiant gesture and, as images go, a kind of madness. As such it presages the direction in which trying to depict Grendel has taken Ajerman's work since. 

At first, he had no idea what he was trying to do. Cats will sit, lie, nap and pounce but for how long, no one knows. Working with that level of unreliability unlocked a kind of new direction. He thought about David Hockney's Dog Days and Bonnard's use of cats. He sat with the muscularity of Egyptian cat sculptures. In Maria Lassnig's Körpergefühl and the physicality of Kazuo Shiraga's practice—the unresolved spaces inside his marks—he found something he needed. He clocked the dogwalkers Frank Auerbach recorded on early morning walks on Primrose Hill and the altogether more sedate cats he included in two domestic scenes: Stella West with her daughters and Julia with Jake at the table. An anecdote about Balthus reportedly living with 40 cats in the South of France, meanwhile, suggested the image of a painter napping under a pile of furballs: the Reposto series duly workshops the idea of the artist as a mad cat lady.

The resulting works are a kind of wild playbook. A series of small canvases barely containing an electric lifeform: Oscar's Levitation, comic-like in its bounce and shriek; Hunters and Prancer, both riffing on the surefooted intent any cat demonstrates when they're mid curbside mission. Everywhere, Ajerman deploys the kind of jagged summary gestural marks Auerbach so often uses to capture the essence of a dynamic shape in a landscape or a face.

Even when they're not attempting to distill movement, Ajerman's new works vibrate. Someone recently asked Ajerman if he still likes "doing this", that is, making work. "Yeah," he replied, "I kinda like it more now. I literally laugh in here, either because it's not going well, or because something really exciting happens, or something happens in the picture." Painting as the sound of something happening.

- Dale Berning Sawa

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Michael Ajerman was born in New York. As a teenager he took part in the Cooper Union Outreach Program, afterwards studying at the Corcoran School of Art, the New York Studio School and the Yale Summer School at Norfolk. In 2003, he completed his Masters Degree at the Slade School of Art, receiving the British Institute Award from the Royal Academy the same year.

He has consistently exhibited internationally in solo and group shows.  With work selected by the David Zwirner website Platform in 2022.  His work is currently shown in the Courtauld Institute’s  East Wing V1 in London.  In 2018, he was awarded UCLA’s Kitaj Research Fellowship.

Select press includes The New York Times, Flash Art, The Guardian, The Sun, Arte, Garageland, Bay Area Reporter and the Royal Academy Magazine. His work is found in international collections including the Beth DeWoody Collection and the Wendy Fisher Collection. He lives and works in London

PREVIOUS EXHIBITIONS

WENDY FREESTONE : PRESENTS ‘JANE DOE’. DECEMBER 2024

“My aim is to capture authentic, relatable moments from everyday life—quiet, introspective scenes that revealdepth and vulnerability. By using the name ‘Jane Doe,’ I add a layer of universality and anonymity, inviting viewers to connect with each subject on a personal level I typically works from photographs that I have taken, using these as a foundation for creating the intimate, everyday portraits,that generally change from the original identity into someone else.”

Wendy Freestone is an interdisciplinary artist, born in a RAF hospital in Wendover Bucks. Her heritage is Liverpool but she is now based in south Northants. She shares her time with her studio at home and in Wood Green London This is Wendy’s second career, she graduated in 2005, with a BA First Class honours, in Fine Art. De Montfort University. She has had her work included in the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition three times and has been short listed twice. She won AXA XL painting prize at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition 2024, for an outstanding piece of figurative art.

Wendy also won the Royal Artist Prize 2018 - visitors choice award, Won a project for Oxford University in conjunction with Twist Art 2024 She exhibits across the UK and worldwide. Wendy started painting during the Pandemic, with this new obsession she studied on the two year Advanced painting course at The Essential School of Painting.Wendy has just graduated from a third year at The ESOP, Professional Development Year lead by Hughie O’Donoghue RA.

MICHAL RUBIN : ‘SHALLOW WATERS’. NOVEMBER 2024

The action takes place somewhere along the River Tech in Céret, an escarpment of the French Catalan region, on a hot summer’s day. A family takes to the cold waters of a shallow bend in the current to escape the heat. We are transported by the tranquillity of the landscape and the casual framing of the compositions to an almost dreamscape, an echo of another place, another time.

Like a parable of love and silence - each frame reflects the photographer’s intimate relationship with her family, a subtle and cultivated space rooted in love which fosters closeness and affection.

These photographs attempt to freeze time, to capture and immobilise one moment in the flow of history. There is an ambiguity derived from the mood they encompass. In a subtle, effortless way, they document family relationships, childhood and coming of age with a timeless feel, hinting at the fleeting nature of our troubled world.

A glimpse of a family vacation, these images strive to capture a moment of positivity, only hinting at the looming war-torn homeland behind Rubin’s lens.We feel theforces that flow underneathall our lives, shape our lives and continually alter our future.

Michal Rubin (born 1977, Tel Aviv) is an artist based in London.Rubin received her BFA in photography from the School of Visual Arts, NYC (2002) and MFA from the Slade School of Fine Arts, UCL, London (2013).

AI-v-A1 : BTWN DIGITAL & ANALOGUE. October 2024.

“Ai-versus-A1” … 11 artists were invited to submit works exploring the space between the digital and analog.

We exist in an ever ai generic prompted world lacking in genuine craft and creativity.

No brief given other than “A1 paper and black ink”. Come and see the diversity and variety of thought and process. 

And how lo-fi manual analogue can inform and make innovation in the digital. 

@lee.matthews @laurag28sid @jeremyacoleman @simontayl0r @_terence_senford @siliatung @judewainwright_ @danielleonsfa @michaelajerman @leebennett782

HVH-ARTS CHARITY. SUMMER SHOW. JULY 2024.

PRAXXIS UNIT SHOW. MANCHESTER UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE. JULY 2024.

DOT WOODS. COOK TOGETHER. BOOK LAUNCH. JUNE 2024.

LEE MATTHEWS. IN THE COMPANY OF OTHERS. MAY 2024.

Matthews’ first London solo show honours the everyday, portraying life and love in their most authentic form.  The artist invites us into her personal sphere as she becomes a quiet observer, commemorating fleeting moments in paint. The body of work celebrates the simple joys of life, from lazy nights on the sofa to the buzz of a crowded bar, chatting around the dinner table to enjoying music with friends.

Inspired by chiaroscuro paintings, Matthews uses low light to sculpt her subjects and bring her recollections to life. This sense of the intangible past is portrayed in the artist’s distinctly supple style. Details are soft and hazy, alluding to the elusiveness of memory and inviting the viewer to draw on their own experiences to make sense of what they see. 

Matthews says of her work:

“I paint the people closest to me to make sense of the moment and my place within it. My paintings glow in a familiar light and, like stills from a home movie, they reflect our own experiences. I observe the everyday and paint to commemorate it.”

In the painting Sofa, a drowsy figure wrapped in blankets stares serenely at a television screen. The unguarded pose of the subject appeals to a sense of intimacy and connection, this unknown person becomes a mother, sister or friend to the viewer. The spectator is witness to another moment of togetherness in the piece Kitchen, as a family gathers around the dining room table, bathed in a colour palette reminiscent of a Pierre Bonnard painting.

In Lee Matthews’ exhibition, extraordinarily ordinary moments are given a greater meaning as the artist and viewers’ memories mingle and overlap, demonstrating the shared beauty of the human experience.

About Lee Matthews

Lee Matthews received her MFA Painting from the Slade at UCL, London (UK), having previously studied at Cornell University, New York (US) for her BFA Painting. Lee currently lives and works in London. Exhibitions include, Dentons Art Prize, Shortlisted Exhibition London, This Year’s Model at Studio1.1, In Formation, at Thames Side Studio Gallery and The Ruth Borchard Self Portrait Prize finalist exhibition, Topophobophilia, Mclusky Bell & Young; Gallery 46, London. Lee can also be found painting at The National Gallery, where she was recently given copyist privileges. 

JULIAN FIDLER - NEW PHOTOS. FEBRUARY 2024.

A Small Space. December 2023.

The Kilburn Daubers. October 2023.

Our eclectic group brings you a fusion of artistry, blending the lens of a filmmaker, the aesthetics of a fashion designer, the eye of a photographer, and the structure of an architect.

In this exhibition, our collective spirit resonates in works that delicately grasp the essence of youth—the ephemeral, magical sparks that ignite moments of domestic intimacy and family ties.

 Our pieces symbolize sand slipping through fingers, embodying the essence of misspent youth, a tribute to the spirited days we all hold dear.