Touchlines of Fortitude - Open call group exhibition
Artists selected by a panel including leading art critic Tabish Khan , award-winning figurative artist Karen Turner, curator Agnieszka Lokaj and The Beach gallery owner Mark Vellacott
Alona Courtney
Title: Fighting for survival
Media: acrylic and pen
Size: 30 x 40 cm
Year: 2025
Price: £150
Description: This painting is an abstract and autobiographical portrayal of the artist's journey through breast cancer treatment. It describes the hardship by exemplifying many symptoms of chemotherapy, including brain fog, night sweats, rash, hair loss, and abdominal pain. It also illustrates the surgery involved, such as the placement of a chemotherapy port, mastectomy, and lymph node surgery, and shows the consequence of the latter: life-long arm swelling.
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Amanda Ribbans
Title: River Swimmer
Media: Mulitblock Linoprint - edition of 15
Size: Unframed 29.7cm (w) x 21cm (h) / Framed 50 (w) x 45 (h)
Year: 2023
Price: Unframed - £100 / Framed - £140
Description: The River Swimmer is a stoic woman who, with quiet determination and strength, dons her woolen hat and neoprene gloves to take to the water in the pink early morning light of winter. The artist referenced Soviet propaganda posters when creating her features, giving her an expression that contemplates her forthcoming swim.
Boxio3
Title: Illusion of Being
Media: Photography
Size: A4
Year: 2023
Price: 100
Description: When everything isn't enough, when you say you see it all, but you see nothing at all, yet still, when the last day comes it surprises us all.
Boxio3
Title: Undisclosed
Media: Film Photography
Size: A3
Year: 2023
Price: 175
Description: Petal for petal, flower to flower. The undisclosed lies still, waiting for the hour. Tell me a tale, tell me a story. The yellow flower blossoms, striking in its glory.
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Cody Choi
WINNER: BEST PHOTOGRAPHY
Title: Miss Bouncy
Media: Photography
Size: 30 x 40 cm
Year: 2022
Price: 395
Description: She’s been hitting hard mentally and physically, but she hangs on! When the world gets to you and beats you up so suddenly that you don’t even have time to react, you try your best to hang on. The piece conveys that things will get better eventually!
Cody Choi
Title: Above the clouds
Media: Photography
Size: 30 x 40 cm
Year: 2016
Price: 395
Description: An exploration of intimate expressions within a limitless horizon, asking, "How high can a dancer jump? What happens when they are above the clouds?"
Doina Moss
Title: Fragility
Media: Oil on canvas board
Size: 50x40
Year: 2025
Price: 300
Description: This piece represents the fragility of a woman's existence. The naked person is willing to earn money by exposing herself for art classes despite the cold environment, which is indicated by the plugged-in radiator. She is squashed to the top of the canvas to emphasise her frustration and exposure, trying to hide outside the canvas. It serves as a metaphor for women's resilience, adaptability, and perseverance.
Georgina Westley
Title: Noor Inayat Khan
Media: Acrylic
Size: 35cm x 35cm
Year: 2025
Price: £450
Website: www.georginawestley.co.uk
Description: This portrait captures the quiet fortitude of Noor Inayat Khan, a pacifist who found a way to serve as a radio operative in occupied France during WWII. Her resilience and determination are rendered in the stark contrast of blue, a symbol of her principled calm, and yellow ochre, representing her deep-rooted connection to humanity and Sufi religion. The fractured and blocky background is a visual metaphor for the fragmented signals and constant danger she navigated. It is a testament to her strength of inner resolve.
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Glynis Lamond
Title: 'Dancing In The Moonlight' (2025) Old Masters Retold Series Matisse & Rego
Media: Ink On Cartridge Paper.
Size: H.42.5 cm x W. 32.5 cm (framed).
Year: 2025
Price: £370 (framed)
Website: www.glynislamond.wixsite.com/portfolio
Description: 'Dancing in the Moonlight' questions the history of women's sport and why it was, until recently, unacceptable for women to play football. Made in the context of the current situation of women's rights in the UK, the piece celebrates the strong women dancing around the pitch when they win a match. The artist, who was denied the opportunity to play football as a child in the 1960s, sees the realization and fulfillment of their talents as a force that drives the need for equality of opportunity in Britain today.
Hanzhi Zhong
WINNER: BEST PRINT
Title: Internal Censor
Media: Monoprint on Paper
Size: 29.7*42cm
Year: 2023
Price: 550
Description: Internal Censor is a series of monoprints that explores the complex emotional landscape of internal struggle. Inspired by a transformative period marked by anxiety and personal challenges, the works reveal the often overlooked battles within, demonstrating enduring strength amid vulnerability. Drawing inspiration from somatization, the series visualizes how emotional turmoil manifests physically, highlighting the intimate connection between mind and body, and the belief that everyone possesses the silent courage and resilience necessary to persist and heal.
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Heather Weston
Title: Core Strength
Media: Acrylic paint and pen.
Size: 35cm x 45cm
Year: 2025
Price: 390
Website: www.bookery.co.uk/collections/paintings
Description: Core Strength is an abstraction about the physical essence of women, exemplified by strength, passion, focus, and joy. It hints at the physical, erotic power that unifies women and serves as the source of their amazing resilience, incredible capacity for creativity, and transformative, cooperative teamwork. The painting is an abstraction of both the intimacy and the wellspring of women's essence.
Hillary Emetuche
WINNER: BEST DRAWING
Title: Drawing of Ezinne
Media: Charcoal and Graphite
Size: 60 x 80 cm
Year: 2021
Price: 5000
Website: www.hillaryemetuche.com
Description: Love and kindness abound in every woman.
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Jana Rychvalska
Title: 'Artist Assigned At Birth'
Media: Sculpture, mannequin dummy, metal base and custom made head attachment. Acrylic, acrylic pens and acrylic enamels, magnetic field castings (nipples)
Size: W45xH180x D30cm
Year: 2024
Price: £4500
Website: www.jrcreativeart.com
Description: This sculpture, the artist's first, is a reflection on her own 'detained artistic journey.' It reminisces about the challenges, setbacks, and curveballs experienced over 30 years abroad while also valuing her inner strength, hard work, and determination to keep going. It addresses the difficulty of finding the calm, time, space, and finance necessary for creativity, contrasting it with periods of hardship. The work introduces the artist's concept of 'improvialism' and embraces unplanned moments during production, which allows for exploration beyond subconscious and societal standards. It relates to the artist's past self while noticing the alien and 'fake' features seen in modern society, and touches on the controversial topic of 'assigned and unassigned' identity within the LGBT community. The artwork also contemplates the ability of the female anatomy to incubate both male and female sexes, the idea of a 'grandmother's gift' in fetal egg development, and is a tribute to the artist's late mother. A mirror can be attached to the neck, inviting the viewer's reflection and promoting the idea that there are no regrets about life's 'oopsies,' as they lead us to where we are meant to be. The destination and oxytocin release when creating art is seen as a 'climax,' suggesting art was assigned to us at birth.
Jessica Ozlo
Title: Sedimentos
Media: Textile
Size: 50 x 40
Year: 2023
Price: £680
Description: As a female artist working in craft, the artist’s practice is built on persistence, sustained by the daily act of showing up and committing to slow processes that demand patience and physical presence. This endurance is not a single moment of strength but a quiet repetition of gestures that accumulate over time. Sedimentos, part of a series exploring the meeting point between fluid painting and structured textile work, was created through layering and hand construction using crochet. The artist intentionally broke from traditional crochet patterns, allowing the work to flow in unexpected ways. It reflects the resilience found in continuing a demanding practice, and the strength that emerges from the meeting of intention and accumulated labour.
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Jessica Ozlo
WINNER: BEST TEXTILES
Title: Meandro
Media: Textile
Size: 30 x30
Year: 2024
Price: £460
Description: Meandro was created through a slow, deliberate process that reflects the persistence at the heart of the artist's craft. Working thread by thread with patience and physical focus, strength emerges gradually through repeated gestures. The making demanded consistency and attention, contributing to the balance between control and openness. Carefully ordered, parallel threads form a surface of calm precision, which gradually transitions into an area of densely looped fibres. This meeting of structure and movement reflects the balance between discipline and adaptability, showing how control can hold space for transformation and how transformation can soften control.
Jessica Ozlo
Title: Arroyo de hilo
Media: Textile
Size: 30 x30
Year: 2024
Price: £420
Description: Arroyo is part of the Sedimentos series, created through a process of hand crochet that moves away from traditional, repetitive patterns toward an open, responsive approach, allowing each stitch to influence the next. This shift from structured technique to intuitive making introduced a sense of movement, with strands of cotton settling into an irregular, textured terrain. The process mirrors the endurance found in craft, where persistence and attention to detail are tempered with a willingness to adapt and respond. The composition recalls the gentle flow of a small stream, a reminder that strength can exist in gradual, unhurried motion. It is a reflection on the balance between discipline and release in creative work.
Jill Iliffe
WINNER: BEST PAINTING
Title: Evelyn (and her Factory Team)
Media: oil
Size: 49x60
Year: 2019
Price: 2000
Website: www.jilliliffe.co.uk
Description: Evelyn, a woman in her 80s, was part of a factory football team. The artist interviewed her as part of a residency with Lewes Football Club's women's team. Evelyn was envious of today's professional women players, as her own matches were very well attended. She is painted holding a photograph of her and her team (a photograph she never actually held, but which was found online). Evelyn still followed and loved football, which is where the artist met her.
Jill Iliffe
Title: The Day Out
Media: graphite pencil on paper
Size: 40x50cm framed
Year: 2018
Price: £600
Website: www.jilliliffe.co.uk
Description: Interested in women's and working-class stories, the artist often uses family photographs or researches other images and speaks to the older women in her life (mother, aunts) for source material. This piece depicts stories of fun and resilience. The source material was possibly a propaganda photo or simply a photo of young women enjoying a day out. By leaving out the faces, the viewer is invited to imagine the women from their own lives, memories, or stories they have heard.
Jill Iliffe
Title: Office Drawing
Media: Graphite drawing on paper, framed.
Size: 9 x 19 cm / 27 x 36 cm (framed)
Year: 2009
Price: 300
Website: www.jilliliffe.co.uk
Description: The artist sat opposite the subject while they worked in education. The subject’s space was full of everything, the opposite of the artist’s minimal space. The fabric around her mouth, according to the artist, tells the story of her life in and out of work.
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Judy Clarkson
Title: Carlisha on Red Ground
Media: oil on canvas
Size: 40 x 30 x 4 cm
Year: 2020
Price: £900
Description: Light falls softly on the face of this young woman, who gazes with gentle confidence into the distance. The artist aimed to convey Carlisha's calm positivity and ability to take on life's obstacles and challenges with quiet determination.
Linda Landers
Title: Meeting
Media: Aquatint etching
Size: 49.2cm x 40.8cm
Year: 2025
Price: £320
Description: This work is from a series based on childhood experiences. This one, specifically, is based on the artist's experience as a female in the 1970s who wanted to play football with local kids and her brothers. Each time she wanted to join in, they had a 'meeting' in whispers to decide if she was allowed to play. Although the decision was always affirmative, they made it look serious enough to create uncertainty, using it as a psychological game to control access. The artist believes that in the present day, those same lads would be proud to see how far females can go in team sports and the tremendous skill, stamina, and perseverance they have.
Maha Satish
WINNER: OVERALL
Title: Monthly conversation
Media: Oil Painting on Canvas
Size: 40 x 40 cm
Year: 2024
Price: 680
Description: Part of a series that discusses women and the limitlessness of their strength. The piece suggests that fortitudes flow faster and further during and despite the monthly conversations we have with our bodies. It is from a set of work about the invisibility of women after a certain stage in their lives, bringing forth the thought that biological essentialisms are our super powers and not a limitation. The artist has attempted to express this idea by capturing tender, strong, utilitarian poses that hands take in everyday situations, conveying a story often left out. Emphatically anonymous, the poses are codes signifying a dilemma, a drama, a decision, a responsibility, a reward, a regret, and a nod to how women forge ahead as naturally as these hands.
Marie Rowley
Title: Kin no Michi ( The Path of Gold)
Media: Pencil Drawing with gold powder
Size: 29.7cm x 42.0cm
Year: 2025
Price: £150
Description: This piece portrays a woman whose face and body are traced with delicate golden cracks, inspired by the Japanese art of kintsugi (repairing broken pottery with gold). Each fracture becomes a luminous path, symbolizing that healing does not erase the past, but transforms it into a source of strength and beauty. The calm expression on her face reflects the quiet resilience that emerges after hardship, while the gold glows as a testament to recovery, self-acceptance, and the courage to be whole again.
Marie Rowley
Title: Hidden in plain site
Media: Digital art
Size: A3
Year: 2025
Price: £100
Description: This piece represents the experience of masking as an autistic person. The figure appears composed on the surface, wearing a practiced expression that blends in. Beneath this exterior lies tension—the effort of hiding stimming, scripting conversations, and suppressing natural reactions. The artwork shows the contrast between the polished exterior and the inner self that longs to be free, revealing the exhaustion and fragility that masking creates. It captures both the strength it takes to perform this daily act and the quiet pain of not being fully seen.
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Mary Swift
Title: The Wings of Courage
Media: Acrylic on canvas
Size: 30x30 cm
Year: 2025
Price: 500
Website: www.maryswiftart.com
Description: This is a portrait of the artist's friend Sindy, telling the simple, dramatic, and powerful story of her strong spirit, resilience, and fortitude performed daily, and her unbending positive will and big heart that keeps giving love, despite all the pain it bears. The description details how, after a cancer diagnosis, Sindy was unfairly removed from a university project she had worked on for nearly five years, with all her work taken and her name cancelled. Despite the painful treatments and constant uncertainty, she remains a kind and loving person, caring for others and finding strength in simple things. She is a 'Crow Sister,' and the community and love for crows is what keeps her going. The painting shows one crow gently rubbing her cheek and another almost hugging her with its wings in a protective gesture, looking upwards with hope. The green colour symbolizes the patience Sindy must exercise, as well as hope, healing, and rejuvenation.
Morgane Pairain
Title: Monthly
Media: Acrylic on wooden board
Size: 40 x 40 cm framed
Year: 2024
Price: 180
Website: www.morganepairain.co.uk
Description: Monthly is an abstract representation of the pain that some women endure every month during their menstrual cycle. The artist notes that too many people still view this as a taboo subject, resulting in women quietly facing unbearable pain alone while being expected to go about their business and attend to their family's needs. The painting aims to challenge this behaviour by confronting the viewer with this uncomfortable reality and to celebrate women's courage.
Nadiia Rom
Title: Balance
Media: oil on canvas
Size: 50x40
Year: 2023
Price: 1500
Description: The first work out of the “Three inner states” series, this is a portrait of the artist's daughter. The artist was struck by her daughter’s effort to keep the balance in an uncomfortable position, and the strong tension in her stable posture. Everything about the pose—long weary fingers, a profile illuminated by light, tensed toes—shows how hard it is to maintain balance. For the artist, this is a vivid illustration of how outward ease entails great effort.
Pauline Rafal
Title: "Together, Variation I"
Media: Linocut and monoprint
Size: 24cm x 21cm
Year: 2025
Price: £175
Website: www.paulinerafal.co.uk
Description: This linocut presents the artist's grandmother as a young and confident single mum with her two daughters. Printed on a blank page from the artist's mother's primary school notebook, it forms part of the "Three Mothers" project, which explores how resilience can be passed down through generations. By tracing the lives of her grandmother and mother through linocut portraits printed on family letters and ephemera, the project displays how women's confidence, strength, and resilience can be transferred from mothers to daughters both in words and actions, and in subliminal gestures and quiet shared moments.
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Pauline Rafal
Title: "Knitting, Variation II"
Media: Linocut on handwritten knitting instructions (background text partially masked with acrylic paint). Mounted in a deep frame due to folding shape of corners.
Size: 35cm x 26cm
Year: 2025
Price: £250
Website: www.paulinerafal.co.uk
Description: This linocut presents the artist's mum, printed on hand-written knitting instructions found in family memorabilia. It is part of the "Three Mothers" project, exploring how resilience can be passed down through generations. The artist remembers her mother as a quiet, steadfast, and strong woman, whose early death from breast cancer left the artist with many unanswered questions. Through the current project, the artist is piecing together her mother's life history and continually being inspired by her resilience in the face of hardships. Based on a life sketch made years ago, this artwork represents a shared moment in time and connects three generations of women: the artist's grandmother (who was present), the quiet, focused, yet strong mother, and the artist herself, who is passing the family values of women's resilience to her daughter.
Rachael Doble
WINNER: BEST SCULPTURE
Title: The light within to transcendent with each tread.
Media: Sculpture - Mixed Media, mirror and glass
Size: 25cm x 10cm x 12cm
Year: 2025
Price: 3,000
Description: This piece, a mirror mosaic rugby boot, was created as a reflection on resilience, transformation, and endurance. It embodies the words ‘women rise, persist, endure, and transform,’ qualities seen as both powerful and quietly passive, strong yet deeply calm. Rugby, often linked with toughness and collective strength, here becomes a vessel for a more spiritual introspection, asking what resilience looks like when turned inward, as survival, reflection, and transformation. By covering the boot in mirrors, the artist invites the viewer to see themselves within the work. The mirrors fracture and multiply the gaze, reminding us that resilience reshapes us in ways that are not always linear or predictable. The sculpture holds both light and shadow, speaking to endurance and the beauty of transformation. The work is driven by a desire to spark feeling, conversation, and connection, and is a testament to the enduring courage of women, who reflect light inwardly while enduring outwardly.
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RainwoodGB
Title: After the Storm
Media: Cyanotype, botanical collage, paper cut, line drawing, tea staining
Size: 13cm x 18cm
Year: 2025
Price: £170 (Currently not for sale. Enquires welcome)
Description: After the Storm tells the quiet but powerful story of a woman who has survived domestic abuse and reclaimed her life. A year after escaping violence, her body has healed into scars, and warmth has returned. The symbolic gesture of arranging flowers at her bedside marks a new chapter of autonomy, dignity, and inner peace. Each medium reflects a stage of her recovery: cyanotype for memory and performance, layered cut paper and lifework for the figure, organic motifs, and tea staining for a sense of time passed and lived-in softness. This work is about survival not in loud declarations, but in the intimate rituals of reclaiming space and care, and the quiet resilience of choosing to stay, heal and bloom again.
Riley Tang
Title: WCID (When Spring Has Sprung)
Media: Digital Art (Photography-based Digital Layering), Printed on Aluminium
Size: 30cm x 30cm
Year: 2023
Price: £199
Description: WCID (When Spring Has Sprung) was created during a personal season of emotional stillness and imagined recovery. "What Can I Do" was literally the only question I had during that time. This piece symbolises a quiet moment of surrender — resilience not through action, but through presence.
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Ronn Beattie
Title: 'The Family Bag'
Media: Ceramic, leather, and interior gold leaf
Size: 27 High x 50 Wide
Year: 2024
Price: NFS (Commission for others' family bags at 750)
Description: This ceramic sculpture, a bag with leather from a man's jacket and a removable top, speaks of the artist's past role as a wife and mother of three small children. Battered by the wear of family life, the bag has slits that let light into the interior. By removing the top, small areas of a gold leaf covered interior can be seen bearing fragmentary images of family life. It speaks of necessary female resilience and family change.
Sal Jones
Title: She Has No Choice
Media: oil on canvas
Size: 50 x 40 cm
Year: 2022
Price: 1000
Description: Inspired by Viola Davis's portrayal of Veronica in Steve McQueen's film Widows. The title is a quote from Davis's description of her character's turn to crime: 'she has suffered a tremendous loss... she now has nothing. Economically she has nothing. Emotionally she has nothing...she is desperate.... she has no choice'. The artist relates to Davis's role as an actor, which is to 'create a human being... as an observer and a thief,' noticing everything about how people think and feel to make others 'feel less alone,' suggesting this is what she also does as a visual artist.
Sal Jones
Title: Christine the Brave
Media: oil on canvas
Size: 40 x 40 cm
Year: 2020
Price: 850
Description: This painting is inspired by the true story of Maria Krystyna Janina Skarbek, also known as Christine Granville, a Polish agent for the British Special Operations Executive during World War II. She performed brave intelligence missions in Nazi-occupied Poland and France, becoming the first female British agent in the field and serving the longest. She adopted the alias Christine Granville in 1941.
Sato Sugamoto
Title: Balance
Media: string, yarn, cloth, foam, aluminium
Size: H37xW30xD10cm
Year: 2025
Price: £900
Description: This piece combines a rounded shape, symbolizing the minds and bodies of women, and a geometric form, representing societal expectations, to explore the interaction between individual autonomy and societal norms. The artist uses strings and yarns, often linked to the domestic sphere, to evoke femininity. By exploring the varied expressions of these materials, the artist aims to reflect the diverse personalities and inner lives of women. The work highlights the tension and balance between these contrasting elements, commenting on a woman’s delicate equilibrium between self and society.
Sheena Bulpitt
Title: Grace and Grit
Media: Acrylic
Size: 25.5cm(h) x 25.5cm(w) x 3.2cm(d)
Year: 2025
Price: £240
Description: Inspired by an expression that resonated with the artist, this piece speaks of the connection we have through our shared experience of living. The subject’s gaze holds the unmistakable determination required to navigate life’s challenges. She stands grounded and immovable, a worthy contender who will not bow down or give in, with blue representing her cool approach. Although there is a hint of pain in her eyes, it is not misery, as a light shines through—an inner glow which refuses defeat. The work combines courage and resilience in the face of adversity with the ability to balance feminine grace and true grit.
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Stella Alexander
Title: Anxiety
Media: Lino Cut
Size: A3
Year: 2025
Price: 150
Website: stellaalexander.art
Description: The artwork is a self-portrait about struggles with anxiety. The inspiration came from a conversation where tackling anxiety was described as trying to gradually unravel a tight ball of tangled string one thread at a time. Completing the artwork and carving each of the threads was a therapeutic exercise in itself.
Sue Roe
Title: Beatrice
Media: Original Collagraph print
Size: 10x10cm (image size)
Year: 2022
Price: £130
Website: https//www.sueroe.com
Description: Beatrice is part of the Women with Attitude series. Born in 1901, she lived through WWI, and her two brothers did not return home. In the post-war years, following the loss of young men and the Spanish flu, young people felt life was short. Young women like Beatrice chose to spend their youth enjoying life and freedom rather than waiting to marry. Beatrice bobbed her hair, listened to Jazz music, and flaunted a disdain for prevailing codes of decent behaviour, living at a time of huge leaps forward in economic, sexual, and political freedoms for women.
Teresa O'Hara
Title: From Scara to Strength
Media: Variety of fabric and threads, beads, sequins and ribbon
Size: 25 cm x 25 cm approx
Year: 2025
Price: £75
Website: Www.youtube.com@allsewnuptextileart
Description: A piece of textile art demonstrating female resilience and strength in thread. It is inspired by the Japanese art of Kintsugi, but uses thread to mend or heal the torn fabric or scars, showing how beauty, strength, and power can grow from female adversity and pain. Contrasting shapes are used to depict the feminine softness of the curve against the harshness of the straight, sharp pain of life. (The piece is noted as still being worked on).
Terry Burke
Title: Persephone
Media: Mixed media, including acrylic paint, on paper
Size: 18.5 x 27 cm
Year: 2025
Price: £320
Description: This piece is inspired by the Greek myth of Persephone, who was kidnapped by Hades. Her mother, Demeter, was so distraught that there was no spring. Demeter fought hard for her daughter’s release, and eventually, Persephone was allowed out, but had to return for six months every year because she had eaten pomegranate seeds. Although a myth explaining the seasons, it is also a great story of female courage and determination.
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The Little Potter
Title: Large Blue Moon
Media: Stoneware Ceramic
Size: 25cm high/ 22cm wide
Year: 2025
Price: £375
Website: thelittlepotter.co.uk
Description: High fired stoneware ceramic decorated with glazes, oxides, and stains and fired to 1280 degrees.
The Little Potter
Title: Blue Pilgrim Vase
Media: Stoneware Ceramic
Size: 30 cm height/24cm width
Year: 2025
Price: £550.00
Website: thelittlepotter.co.uk
Description: High fired stoneware decorated with a range of stoneware glazes, oxides and stains and fired in an electric kiln to 1280.
Usha Rajagopal
Title: A TRIBUTE TO MY MOTHER’S CARER
Media: Acrylic
Size: 36x46 cm
Year: 2025
Price: £300
Website: www.usharajagopal.co.uk
Description: This painting represents two women of exceptional resilience and strength. The carer, Jayanti (in blue), looks after the artist's mother, who has dementia and is wheelchair-bound. Jayanti lost her son two years ago in a motorcycle accident and, despite that tragedy, she has put it behind her to care for the mother and run the home. She is always smiling. The painting depicts a local restaurant with jazzy wallpaper that serves good vegetarian food, a diet Jayanti converted to for the artist's mother. The artist states, "We are blessed with this angel. If I get a prize it goes to Jayanti the carer."
Yiyi Song
WINNER: BEST CERAMICS
Title: Soft Unfolding
Media: ceramics
Size: 171718
Year: 2025
Price: 350
Description: Soft Unfolding explores the quiet resilience found in the everyday lives of women. Formed through hand-building and slow, intuitive gestures, the sculpture unfolds in a way that resembles skin or petals, appearing fragile yet remaining grounded and enduring. The uneven glaze and exposed clay reveal the marks of process, echoing the imperfect but persistent journey of adaptation, care, and emotional labour. The work is inspired by the artist’s experience of migration, identity shift, and transformation, speaking of a softness that holds strength, shaped through acts of folding, holding, and staying open. It honours a form of resilience that is embodied, quiet, and deeply felt.
Yiyi Song
Title: Syntax
Media: ceramic sculpture
Size: Approx. 9 cm (height) × 24 cm (width) × 14 cm (depth) (measured as displayed in current installation layout)
Year: 2025
Price: 280
Description: Syntax draws strength from relation. Each ceramic unit is curled, folded, and positioned in tension with others. These sculptural fragments suggest motion, and they rely on one another to stand. The forms evoke quiet resistance: women bending under weight, folding for others, curling into themselves. Yet, from these postures emerges a shared structure where resilience becomes visible through collective balance. Much like team sport, this work reflects how strength is shaped not by singular heroism but through coordination, support, and interdependence. It is described as a choreography of care.