Hales Gallery

Hales Gallery Contemporary art, est. 1992
London / New York

OPENING TIMES

London:
Thursday - Saturday, 11am-6pm
or by appointment

7 Bethnal Green Road
E1 6LA, London, UK
T +44 (0)20 7033 1938

________

New York:
Thursday - Saturday, 11am-6pm
or by appointment

547 West 20th Street
NY 10011, USA
T +1 646 590 0776

On View | Anwar Jalal Shemza, ‘Head’, 1957 at the National Portrait Gallery, London, UK🔗Link in bio to learn more.Having...
02/09/2026

On View | Anwar Jalal Shemza, ‘Head’, 1957 at the National Portrait Gallery, London, UK

🔗Link in bio to learn more.

Having recently entered the collection of the National Portrait Gallery, ‘Head’, 1957 by Anwar Jalal Shemza, is currently on view in Room 29, forming a key part of a new display dedicated to self-portraiture across the National Portrait Gallery’s Collection.

Created shortly after Shemza moved from Pakistan to England in 1956, ‘Head’ marks a pivotal moment in the development of his practice. Part of an elegant series of heads made between 1956–57, the work signals his departure from an earlier illustrative style towards abstraction and the development of a new visual language shaped through the double prism of Islamic and European aesthetics.

Adapting the human subject, Shemza explores colour, surface, geometry and spatial interplay, while his use of pattern, line and repeated forms reflects his growing engagement with European modernism, particularly the work of Paul Klee.

These early experiments would lay the foundations for the distinctive formal vocabulary Shemza developed over the following decades, drawing together influences including Mughal architecture, Arabic calligraphy and carpet patterns.

Image 1: Anwar Jalal Shemza, Head, 1957. Photo by Damian Griffiths
Image 2: Installation view, Room 29 at the National Portrait Gallery, London, UK

National Portrait Gallery

Opening Soon | Staging Resistance: Tessa Boffin, Rotimi Fani-Kayode and Sunil Gupta in 1980s London🔗Link in bio to learn...
01/09/2026

Opening Soon | Staging Resistance: Tessa Boffin, Rotimi Fani-Kayode and Sunil Gupta in 1980s London

🔗Link in bio to learn more.

10 September – 17 October 2026
Opening reception: Thursday 10 September, 6 – 8pm

Hales is delighted to present ‘Staging Resistance’, a look at Tessa Boffin’s, Rotimi Fani-Kayode’s and Sunil Gupta’s trailblazing work from the 1980s, a pivotal moment for Q***r British photography. The show coincides with Sunil Gupta’s retrospective, ‘Life with a Camera, 1970 - Now’, on view at Kettle’s Yard (Cambridge, UK) from September 2026 to January 2027, and ‘Where We Touch the Archive’, an ambitious touring project focused on the work of Tessa Boffin by Devonshire Collective, on view in Eastbourne, UK (July - September 2026). At the same time, Rotimi Fani-Kayode is featured in the Barbican Art Gallery’s ‘Project a Black Planet: The Art and Culture of Panafrica’, (through September 2026, also touring to Art Institute of Chicago, MACBA Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona and KANAL-Centre Pompidou Bruxelles).

‘Staging Resistance’ brings together three distinct bodies of work created against the cultural and political backdrop of 1980s UK: an environment largely shaped by the AIDS crisis and the introduction of Section 28 (1988), a controversial law that prohibited local authorities from “promoting homosexuality”. Showcasing Gupta’s ‘“Pretended” Family Relationships’, Fani-Kayode’s ‘Bodies of Experience’ and Boffin’s ‘Angelic Rebels: Le****ns and Safer Sex’, the show considers photography not as a neutral record but as a means of constructing q***r identities, intimacies and communities. Using portraiture, montage, allegory and theatrical staging, the artists in the exhibition produced images which not only emphasized alternative forms of visibility, but underscored desire and kinship which the dominant culture either denied or could not imagine.

Image 1: Sunil Gupta, Untitled #1 from the series ‘Pretended’ Family Relationships, 1988
Image 2: Rotimi Fani-Kayode, Nothing to Lose VIII (Bodies of Experience), 1989
Image 3: Tessa Boffin, Untitled #1, 1989

Sunil Gupta

Anwar Jalal Shemza: A Circle, A Square, A Puzzle at Dulwich Picture Gallery, London, UK🔗Link in bio to learn more.21st S...
27/08/2026

Anwar Jalal Shemza: A Circle, A Square, A Puzzle at Dulwich Picture Gallery, London, UK

🔗Link in bio to learn more.

21st September 2027 - 16th January 2028

Hales is delighted to announce ‘Anwar Jalal Shemza: A Circle, A Square, A Puzzle’, a retrospective at Dulwich Picture Gallery, curated by Hammad Nasar and opening in September 2027.

The first major UK museum exhibition dedicated to Shemza’s work in more than 30 years, the exhibition will bring together over 80 works spanning his practice and offer a fresh appraisal of an artist whose distinctive visual language brought together modernism, abstraction, calligraphy and Islamic architectural forms.

Image: Anwar Jalal Shemza, Blue Blue Jazz, 1967 (detail)

Dulwich Picture Gallery

On View | Kay WalkingStick in ‘An Indigenous Present’ at The Frist Art Museum, TN, USA🔗Link in bio to learn more.Kay Wal...
26/08/2026

On View | Kay WalkingStick in ‘An Indigenous Present’ at The Frist Art Museum, TN, USA

🔗Link in bio to learn more.

Kay WalkingStick’s ‘Apron Agitato’ (1974), ‘Archetypal Image’ (1975) and ‘Chief Joseph Series’ (1974–76) are included in ‘An Indigenous Present’, on view at The Frist Art Museum through 27 September 2026. The exhibition debuted at the ICA, Boston and will continue to the Frye Art Museum, Seattle (7 November 2026–14 February 2027).

Created while WalkingStick was studying at Pratt Institute, ‘Apron Agitato’ (1974) is one of a series of representational studies of an artist’s apron suspended from the three points of an isosceles triangle. The apron’s iconic shape, particularly the curved negative space formed by the draped fabric, inspired the arc, a form WalkingStick would return to throughout her career.

‘Archetypal Image’, (1975), is a seminal example of WalkingStick’s early experiments in abstraction. Rooted in studies of a tipi, a bowed rectangular form stretches across the picture pane. Abstracting the representation of the tipi to present an ambiguous form allowed WalkingStick to push beyond literal interpretation and towards a deep engagement with modernism.

‘Chief Joseph Series’ (1974-76) continues this exploration in a tribute to the Nez Percé leader. Each of the 36 paintings in the series features a unique arrangement of four recurring arc forms - two small and two large segments of a sphere. Though entirely abstract and almost formulaic in conception, the rhythm and repetition of the multiple canvases evoke the long journey of Chief Joseph and his followers across hundreds of miles of Oregon, Idaho, Wyoming, and Montana territories. At the level of the individual panels, this sense of movement is absent; in its place is an “absolutely static form” that the artist intended to convey a sense of eternal calm.

1: Kay WalkingStick, Apron Agitato, 1974
2: Kay WalkingStick, Archetypal Image 1975
3: Installation views, Kay WalkingStick, Chief Joseph Series, 1974-76, ‘An Indigenous Present’ at The Frist Art Museum, TN, USA, Jun 26–Sep 27, 2026. Image courtesy of the Frist Art Museum

ICA/Boston Frist Art Museum

On View | Sunil Gupta in ‘Fragile Beauty: Photographs from the Sir Elton John and David Furnish Collection’ at Jeu de Pa...
25/08/2026

On View | Sunil Gupta in ‘Fragile Beauty: Photographs from the Sir Elton John and David Furnish Collection’ at Jeu de Paume, Paris, France

🔗Link in bio to learn more.

Sunil Gupta, ‘Untitled #21, from the series Christopher Street’, 1976 is included in ‘Fragile Beauty’ through 24 September 2026. Marking over thirty years of collecting, ‘Fragile Beauty’ celebrates Sir Elton John and David Furnish’s passion for photography, reflecting their personal taste and unique eye as collectors. Across five thematic sections, the exhibition explores themes such as desire, celebrity, fashion, reportage, and affirmation of identity

Sunil Gupta’s Christopher Street (1976) was the first body of photographs he made as a practicing artist, using the camera as a tool for open expression after moving to New York City. Taken in Manhattan’s Christopher Street, the series captures a pivotal moment in the gay liberation movement, documenting a thriving community with intimacy and spontaneity.

Fusing the public with the personal, the photographs reflect both the openness of the era and Gupta’s own coming out as an artist. Viewed today, the series stands as both a record of a transformative moment in history and a testament to the community that shaped his lifelong artistic practice.

Images: Sunil Gupta, Untitled #21, from the series Christopher Street, 1976

Sunil Gupta Jeu de Paume

On view | Carole Gibbons, ‘Persephone’, 1971 at Tate Britain, London, UK🔗Link in bio to learn more.Recently acquired by ...
24/08/2026

On view | Carole Gibbons, ‘Persephone’, 1971 at Tate Britain, London, UK

🔗Link in bio to learn more.

Recently acquired by Tate, Carole Gibbons’ ‘Persephone’, 1971, is currently on view in the Modern and Contemporary British Art galleries (room 21) at Tate Britain. The work was purchased with funds provided by the Nicholas Themans Trust 2025.

From an early age, Gibbons has been fascinated by mythology, drawing on its themes throughout her paintings and drawings. After being evacuated to the Highlands in 1941, she received books on Greek mythology from her mother, which proved formative to her being.

‘Persephone’, an important early landscape, speaks to mythic tableau as Gibbons reimagines the story of the Greek goddess Persephone. Gibbons’ paintings have their own ‘logic’ and ‘atmosphere’ within formal explorations of colour, surface and uncanny pictorial organisation.

Image: Carole Gibbons, Persephone, 1971. Photo by Damian Griffiths

Carolegibbons Tate

On View | Ebony G. Patterson in ‘Project a Black Planet: The Art and Culture of Panafrica’ at Barbican Art Gallery🔗Link ...
21/08/2026

On View | Ebony G. Patterson in ‘Project a Black Planet: The Art and Culture of Panafrica’ at Barbican Art Gallery

🔗Link in bio to learn more.

‘Project a Black Planet’ explores the impact of Pan-Africanism on artistic and cultural production from the 1920s to the present, through over 250 works – from paintings and installations to posters, journals, and film.

Ebony G. Patterson ‘Invisible Presence: Bling Memories’ was originally conceived as a performance for En Mas’, a project exploring Caribbean Carnival as a site of contemporary artistic practice. First staged during Kingston’s Carnival in 2014, the work featured a procession of 50 elaborately embellished coffins inspired by Jamaican “bling funerals”–vivid celebrations that honour lives often overlooked in death as they were in life.

Blending the visual language of Carnival with rituals of mourning, Patterson transforms spectacle into an act of remembrance and resistance. Addressing class inequality, visibility, and collective memory, the work asserts a powerful presence for communities too often rendered invisible, while reimagining public ritual as a space for both protest and celebration.

Image: Project a Black Planet: The Art and Culture of Panafrica, Installation View, 11 Jun – 6 Sep 2026 © Max Colson/Barbican Art Gallery

Forthcoming | Hales at Frieze Masters 2026🔗Link in bio to learn more.Booth D1014 – 18 October 2025Regent’s Park, London,...
20/08/2026

Forthcoming | Hales at Frieze Masters 2026

🔗Link in bio to learn more.

Booth D10
14 – 18 October 2025
Regent’s Park, London, UK

Hales is pleased to announce its inaugural participation in Frieze Masters with a solo presentation of works by Kay WalkingStick.

Image: Kay WalkingStick, Solstice, 1981 (detail). Photo by JSP Art Photography

Frieze

Forthcoming | Hales at Frieze London 2026🔗Link in bio to learn more.Booth A2414 – 18 October 2025Regent’s Park, London, ...
20/08/2026

Forthcoming | Hales at Frieze London 2026

🔗Link in bio to learn more.

Booth A24
14 – 18 October 2025
Regent’s Park, London, UK

Wilhelmina Barns-Graham
Ally Fallon
Chitra Ganesh
Carole Gibbons
Sunil Gupta
Haroun Hayward
Ken Kiff
Hew Locke

Image: Hew Locke, Sikandar 2, 2025 (detail). Photo by Damian Griffiths

Frieze

Hales wishes Andrew Bick a happy birthday! Bick’s works are executed from a combination of oil paint, marker pen, wax, a...
20/08/2026

Hales wishes Andrew Bick a happy birthday!

Bick’s works are executed from a combination of oil paint, marker pen, wax, acrylic paint and Perspex. The works play with elements of flat colour, depth and surface, revealing the process of painting as a series of strategies or components within the visual puzzle of the whole. Bick’s paintings call into question false opposites, and contrast hard geometric or blunt graphic forms with uncertain or dashed-out strokes or patches of scrubbed brushwork. Within the abstract geometry of his works, he combines matte and glossy surfaces, different textures, colour and ‘non-colour’. His work has been described as ‘gently disruptive and purposefully chaotic’.

In Bick’s view, new versions of the abstract, concrete and constructive, necessitate the repetition of banal information, leading to an unexpected conjuncture of word and image. His work is based on the belief that disruption within a system helps us relearn the process of paying attention. Mediated layering of geometry and gesture act as an antidote to a world of instantaneous information.

Currently on view at ARTSHED, SOME TREES (Part 3): Andrew Bick and Anwar Jalal Shemza is curated by Andrew Bick and places his own work in dialogue with that of Anwar Jalal Shemza, exploring a shared engagement with the ideas and legacy of Paul Klee. Through painting, drawing and a monumental wall work, Bick investigates how Klee’s systematic diagrams of trees resonate through Shemza’s diasporic modernism and his own contemporary Constructivist practice.

Image: Andrew Bick in his studio, 2018, Photo by Angus Mill
Image 2 & 3: Installation view, ARTSHED Glaisdale, July 2026

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