Gallery Presentation
It is no surprise that the Room of Wonder, otherwise known as the wunderkammer or cabinet of curiosities, has captured the imagination of both collectors and viewers for over half a millennium. What better way to display one's passions, values, both personal and material, and, ultimately, one's identity, than through the objects and artworks acquired throughout life?
Today, the age of technology has allowed us to seek inspiration worldwide from the comfort of our homes, with digital replacing the physical and knowledge easily forgotten due to its effortless access. Yet, despite our fleeting modern interests, the cabinet of curiosities - where even museums are, in a sense, just large rooms of wonder - continues to captivate, rooted in their rich historical, cultural, and traditional significance.
Christell Teá is an artist and explorer, a modern-day blend of Dürer and Darwin. With her Indian ink pen in hand, her eye misses nothing, capturing the complexity of the visible world and the forces that shape it. She draws from life, never from photos or memory. With a thin, confident line and a recognizable personal style, she brings the viewer not only into the worlds she explores but also into her own realm of unique, often challenging perspectives. It is resemblance, not realism, that she seeks. Architecture, interiors and the objects within, winding staircases, culinary delights, the natural world, and the extinct wonders of natural history museums - these are just a few of the subjects she explores and will continue to do so. For Drawing Now 2025, Teá will present a series of self-portraits wearing hats as well as a new body of work on paper exploring the interiors of the Musee Gustave Moreau.
Alongside Teá, Purdy Hicks will exhibit the work of Pierre Bergian, Jonathan Delafield Cook, Alice Maher, and Ciara Roche.
The objects and artworks in Pierre Bergian's drawings of interiors seem ready to leap off the canvas, as if crafted for a collector's room of wonder. He returns frequently to the theme of the kunstkammer.
Ciara Roche's oils on paper, in their miniature scale, are a cabinet's dream. She depicts eerie, cinematic inspired scenes—seemingly ordinary interiors that portray a world held in a permanent state of suspense.
Jonathan Delafield Cook is a master of the natural world. His charcoal drawings, with their almost unearthly precision, are meticulous recordings of nature’s beauties and peculiarities—minerals, icebergs, insects, flowers, sea life, and wildlife.
Alice Maher, a multidisciplinary artist, challenges the impossible. Whether it’s her sculptural works—a helmet of snails, a necklace of tongues, or a collar of hearts—or her watercolours on paper that depict the uncanny and the surreal, she offers an entrance into the curiosities of the mind.
