Leyden Gallery is fast becoming known for its imaginative curation and forward-thinking programming of exhibitions and events. This young gallery, which is now moving into its second year, can be found in a unique position on the borders between the City and Spitalfields. The exceptional intersection of the gallery’s locale has provided a defining focus to the underlying work that goes on there, in combining works by established artists like Paula Rego and Henry Moore, with a no less distinct group of younger and newer artists.

The Platform for Emerging Arts exhibitions are an important and distinctive element of Leyden Gallery’s on-going dedication to the discovery and development of emerging artists. As such Leyden Gallery is delighted to present their fifth Platform for Emerging Arts exhibition. This is their largest Platform show to date, with an impressive range of artists working in mediums as diverse as wool, biro and oil. From abstract painting to the detailed precision of drawing, the Platform for Emerging Arts shows are a curatorial vehicle for a brilliant international group of emerging artists at various stages of their development and careers

Silvia Battista

The cultural references for Battista’s exquisitely detailed pencil drawings are early Italian renaissance painting. Her re-thinking of the work of artists such as Pontorno, Antonello da Messina and Masaccio, especially their understanding of the human figure is re-interpreted through a contemporary lens.

Lydia Brockless

Much of Brockless’ sculptural work deals with paradoxes, these complex contradictions are materialised in the combinations of processes and forms.

Daniel Hosego

In his series called Melancholia (after Dürer) Hosego explores the anxieties of contemporary artists in their attempt to forge an original artistic vision. Consisting of a triptych of screen-printed artworks that originated from images, first painstakingly drawn across the pages of leather bound books, the works appear to occupy a liminal state between object and image.

Margherita Isola

In this Platform show Isola will show works which belong to her new project called Hamlet in Harar, which is presented here as a series of embroidered collages of mixed technique.

Johann Lester

Lester presents a body of work that has been produced by only using the marks of black biros, creating interplay between shadow and light.

Conor Flynn O’Donnell

Through his abstract painting practice O’Donnell engages the question of perfection, in what way it may exist, and how we may continually seek it.

Olexandra Solomka

The artist draws her influences from Tudor-age portraiture, as well as Eastern European iconography and folk art.

Sintija Vikmane

Through her art, the Latvian artist Vikmane researches the convergence of history, beliefs and mythology from diverse cultures.