Liminal Gallery is pleased to present A dream within a dream, a group exhibition showcasing the works of six contemporary artists: Zena Blackwell, Chloe Bonfield, Fernanda Cortes, Natalka Liber Stephenson, Candice Tripp, and Maud Whatley.

Taking its title from Edgar Allan Poe’s iconic poem, A dream within a dream explores the boundary between reality and illusion. The artists featured in this exhibition employ diverse mediums and approaches, yet all draw upon the ephemeral and fantastical to create works that resonate with timeless narratives and otherworldly beauty.

A dream within a dream evokes a shared sense of wonder, questioning the nature of perception, memory, and the stories we tell ourselves. By drawing inspiration from the past and the subconscious, these artists create a bridge between the seen and the unseen, the known and the mysterious.

Is all that we see or seem / But a dream within a dream?

All are welcome to join us to celebrate the opening of A dream within a dream on Saturday 1 February at Liminal Gallery’s Main Space, 5-8pm.

Zena Blackwell is an award-winning figurative painter based in Cardiff, Wales, UK, working primarily in oil paint. She obtained her MFA at Central Saint Martins; BA at Wimbledon School of Art and most recently completed the Turps Correspondence Course. A year after resuming her painting practice following a lengthy break, Blackwell won first prize at the Cardiff Made Summer Open 2017, presenting a very well-received inaugural solo show there the following year, consisting of 30 new works. She was also awarded 3rd prize at PS Mirabel’s open exhibition Paint (Manchester) in 2019 and in 2024 she was awarded the Friends of the Glynn Vivian Prize at Beep Painting Biennial. She has been shortlisted for the Royal Academy Summer Show and Beep Painting Prize twice.

She has exhibited at many prestigious galleries including Saatchi Gallery and Hastings Contemporary. Her work is held in the permanent collection of the National Library of Wales and in many private collections globally, including USA, UK, France, Switzerland, Canada, Japan, Russia, Belgium and Poland.

Blackwell founded the instagram blog Contemporary Cymru (2017 -2023), between 2003-2011 she co-founded a critically acclaimed live music event in London and also DJ’ed nationally and internationally.

Chloe Bonfield is a UK-based artist and illustrator whose multifaceted practice bridges the worlds of painting, drawing, and storytelling. Working as an illustrator since 2008, Chloe transitioned to painting in 2023, blending her foundational drawing techniques with an exploratory approach to paint. Her work delves into the spaces in between worlds, creating ghostly images that evoke transformation and reflection, addressing themes of disintegrating cosmology and the reinvention of collective tropes in a changing world.

Bonfield’s paintings and drawings are held in private collections across the UK and Turkey. Her recent exhibitions include Milieu Studio in St Ives (2023), Alma Artspace in Newquay Orchard (2023–24), and Potager Gardens (2024). She was awarded a scholarship by Stiftung Kunstfonds in 2022 for a collaborative project with Anna-Luise Lorenz. Her other notable projects include a residency at Unit3 funded by the Tresorys Fund (2022) and coordination of the Stile Collective, supported by Creative Kernow.

Fernanda Cortes is a Mexican-Italian artist based in the UK, where she has developed her creative practice over the past nine years. With a background in Product Design from UNAM, she has a deep appreciation for materiality and form. Her studies in Paris and Canada led her to ceramics, a medium through which she explores the emotional layers of human experience.

Her work combines sculpture and storytelling, using anthropomorphic forms to examine vulnerability, resilience, and dehumanization. Short stories accompany her sculptures, adding depth to the interplay of light and shadow in each piece.

Cortes was selected for residencies at Guldagergaard in Denmark and La Meridiana in Italy, supported by the Arts Council’s ‘Developing Your Creative Practice’ Grant. She has also received the Ciudad de Vénissieux Award at the Manises Biennial in Spain.

Currently working from her studio at the Sculpture Lounge in Holmfirth, Cortes is focused on her project Emotional flow in the era of microaggressions, supported by the Bruckner Foundation’s Bursary for the Encouragement of Ceramics Creation. This project reflects her commitment to connecting personal and societal narratives.

Natalka Liber Stephenson’s practice is strongly founded in experimental drawing. She creates images to process her daily experience and the dreams that bookend them, interwoven with personal mythologies and esoteric concepts.

Building her work involves coaxing subjects from the miasma surrounding and separating reality, memory and fantasy. Employing techniques like automatic writing, sensory exercises, astrology, and Tarot to feed her process and create an Otherworld with transformed figures, flora and objects.

Recent work has been a purgatorial excavation of a self-inflicted pressure to take shelter, trying to see through the fog surrounding that refuge and reflecting upon an unseductive future. By combining repetition and ritual, she builds a series of works that explore her stance on daily interactions and experiences.

Liber Stephenson was born in London and received an MA from the Royal College of Art in 2012, where she also received the Augustus Martin Award for her use of Printmaking. She currently lives and works in Ramsgate, East Kent.

Candice Tripp is a South African-born artist living in the North East of England. At 21 her darkly humorous paintings caught the eye of a local gallery who provided the platform for her first solo show. At 22 her work was being exhibited in LA.

Child-like subjects pluck at adult themes in paintings and sculptures whose narrative provides all the answers one could expect to find on a single page torn from a picture book. Occasionally playful, often sardonic, she levels her aim at the modern human experience through a lens inspired by her deep love for horror, folk art and story-telling.

As a self-taught painter, her ever-evolving practice now extends to include etching, sculpture, installation, and in recent years, wax carving for her jewellery line, which she produces from her studio in Newcastle upon Tyne.

She has had solo shows in London and New York, provided the award-winning artwork for Arrow Video's release of Donnie Darko, and exhibited in the first inaugural Bangkok Art Biennale in 2018.

Maud Whatley makes drawings which layer images and motifs taken from art-historical paintings, online archives, her camera roll and Google image results. Her work intends to explore some of the politics of looking at things, the unexpected eroticism of placing different ideas in the context of one another and the ways in which the repetitive insistent touches of drawing can be sexy and weird.

Whatley is based in Margate. She has shown work there at Liminal Gallery (Haunches, 2024, solo), Limbo (A convenient size for the lap, 2019) and Crate (Domino, 2018) as well as in London (Careless whisper, 2019) and Folkestone (Giggling quietly at the feel of it, 2018). She has spoken at the London Conference of Critical Thought (2018) and published drawings in Hotel magazine (2021).

Though the smallest bricks-and-mortar contemporary gallery in the UK, Liminal Gallery challenges the status quo, presenting the diverse and resonant voices of today’s artists from across the UK and Ireland. While historically women and minorities have been wildly underrepresented in the art world, we stand as proof that change is happening.