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The Approach is a contemporary art gallery based in Bethnal Green in London. It has been running for

Bill Lynch: Drawings & Paintings
17 November – 17 December 2017

Jack Lavender: Baggy to Bootcut
The Annexe
17 November – 17 December 2017

10/09/2026

Phillip Allen ‘Farm’ ✨

Preview: Wednesday 16 September, 6-9pm

The Approach is pleased to present Farm, Phillip Allen’s tenth solo exhibition with the gallery. For this presentation in The Annexe, Allen will showcase a group of felt-pen drawings produced between 1998 and 2026 alongside three new paintings. By showing works on both paper and board, the exhibition reveals how Allen translates one medium to another through a process of repetition and habitual mark making.

Exhibition continues until Saturday 31 October. Follow link in bio for more info 📲

Email [email protected] to request a preview ✉️

IMAGE:
Phillip Allen
Untitled, n.d.
Felt tip on paper
Each: 42 x 29.7 cm

09/09/2026

Olivia Jia ‘Faun’ ✨

Preview: Wednesday 16 September, 6-9pm

The Approach is pleased to present Faun, the debut solo exhibition at the gallery by Philadelphia based artist Olivia Jia. The show takes its title from the flora and fauna that recur within the show: decorative vases and ceramics embellished with motifs from nature, lattice windows from Chinese Gardens, alongside ornaments in the form of animals or flowers.

Jia’s own identity as the child of Chinese immigrants to the United States deeply informs the work, blending images of traditional East Asian ephemera with historical artefacts sourced from Pennsylvania - the American state in which Jia was raised. She draws from museum archives, images found online, family photographs, combined with invented imagery based on memories and family stories to construct a personal history told through objects.

Exhibition continues until Saturday 31 October. Follow link in bio for more info 📲

Email [email protected] to request a preview ✉️

IMAGE:
Olivia Jia
Ephemera (figurine of a rider), 2026
Oil on panel
17.8 x 12.7 cm | 7 x 5 in.

With thanks to Margot Samel

Olivia Jia

04/09/2026

Kira Freije ‘Between Sunlight’ KINDL

Preview: Saturday 12 September, 6-9pm

In ‘Between Sunlight’, Kira Freije brings together a group of sculptural works. Her figures radiate a deep sense of connection, even as they appear absorbed in their own thoughts. Fabric and found materials give the scene a layered, tactile quality, while the narratives are deliberately left open, leaving room for visitors to bring their own experiences and associations. Curated by Laura Smith

Kira Freije (b. 1985, London) lives and works in London. She is nominated for the 2026 Turner Prize.

Exhibition continues until 21 February 2027. Follow link in bio for more info 📲

Email [email protected] to request a preview ✉️

IMAGE:
Kira Freije
Between sunlight [detail], 2023
Stainless steel, cast aluminium, silk, tarpaulin
57 x 205 x 98 cm
Photo: Jens Ziehe

01/09/2026

Phillip Allen is featured in ‘On the Thick and Thin of Painting’ Cross Lane Projects

Conceived by the British painter Daniel Sturgis Daniel Sturgis, On the Thick and Thin of Painting explores the materiality of the medium, its physical and ethereal boundaries, and the enduring subculture of abstraction.

The exhibition is framed as a visual dialogue between nine artists’ work, where the title refers to how each artist navigates the formal and conceptual densities of paint. Whether applied with full-bodied gusto, delicate slightness, or felt through its absence, the “thick and thin” of the exhibition’s title serves as a metaphor for how each artist uses an idea of paint to position their work against art history, the contemporary moment, and the belief in painting as a critical and durable medium.

Exhibition continues until Saturday 19 September 📆

IMAGE 2:
Flat Space Thinking (more oddities version), 2026
Oil and mixed media on board
105 x 85 cm

IMAGE 3:
Bolide Event (eye flicker version), 2026
Oil and mixed media on board
105 x 85 cm

IMAGE 4:
Installation view
Each:
Untitled, c. 2020-2026
Felt tip on paper
42 x 29.7 cm

Images courtesy of Cross Lane Projects
Photo: Liam Collins

31/08/2026

Magali Reus is featured in ‘Muddy Minds’ REST

For REST, materials function as memory; they can reveal a past, offer insight into the present, and contribute to the imagination of possible futures. Following the movement of materials, an image of humans emerges. This year’s focus is on sedimentation: the process by which loose material is deposited by water or wind. By accumulation and settling, information can be held, preserved, and stored. Today’s material culture is tomorrow’s archaeology. The soil reveals traces from millennia ago until just a few years back, but both carry different connotations. Where does the line lie between valuable and valueless, old and new, and between heritage and waste? What makes certain things last while others decay and are forgotten?

The presentation Muddy Minds featuring Jumana Manna, Alexandra Hunts, Matilde Yilmaz and Magali Reus is centered around a geo-archaeological excavation. Layers of sand, peat, loam, and (fired) clay in the profiles are formed across different timescales by natural, human, or combined processes. The Saalian ice age, sea-level rise, land reclamation, flooding, geo-engineering, land consolidation, and present-day use converge into a single image. Layer by layer, geo-archaeologist Ella Egberts and REST unravel the many appearances of our surrounding through preserved seeds, lugworms, reed peat, and sand pits. Similarly the exhibited artworks interrogate the entanglement of our ecological, political, and social fabric. Both archaeology and art make visible the value systems and expose the ongoing process of selecting what we preserve, forget, or discard.

Exhibition continues until Saturday 12 September 📆

IMAGE 1-2:
Settings (Swallows), 2019
Powder coated and airbrushed steel, aluminium, sprayed UV printed resin, acrylic, grub screws
71 x 71 x 5 cm

IMAGE 3-5:
Settings (Twice Pacific), 2019
Powder coated and airbrushed steel, aluminium, sprayed UV printed resin, acrylic, grub screws
71 x 71 x 5 cm

Muddy Minds at REST
Photo: Gert Jan van Rooij

29/04/2024

On feeling - an exhibition about emotion and subjectivity ✨

Opening July 2024 📆

Curated by Peter Davies

The show will feature 10 emerging artists who we are introducing over the coming weeks.

Anderson Borba, born 1972, works between Brazil and the United Kingdom. He has a two person exhibition with Gokula Stoffel ‘Thinking Hands’ opening 2 May in New York. Anderson Borba is represented by Fortes D’Aloia & Gabriel

IMAGE:
The figure with colourful skin, 2024
Wood, paper, wood stain, spray, oil pastel and linseed oil
175 x 30 x 25 cm

06/03/2023

⚡️Final week to see Sam Windett in 'Frontal Sphinx' at Mendes Wood DM São Paulo⚡️

The sphinx, the mythological creature with the body of a lion and a human head, is one of the most powerful and iconic images of the Egyptian and Greek empires. The word ‘sphinx’ is derived from the Greek verb sphingein, meaning ‘to bind’ or ‘to squeeze.’ ‘Decipher Me, or I'll Devour You’ was the ultimate mystery of the Theban sphinx in ancient Greek mythology: according to the story, the sphinx watched every traveler who passed along a road. The traveler was made to solve a riddle that would either decide the end of their life, or a new beginning. The sphinx asked which animal had four legs in the morning, two in the afternoon, and three at night. If the traveler could not answer, the monster would eat them. Yet the answer to her question was life itself: the stages of a man’s life—beginning, middle, and end.

Art history deals non-linearly with death, the absence and the void. Nature is comprised of atom and void, image and idea, writing and matter. The role of the artist, amongst others, is to bring these oppositions to light. We embarked together on this sphinx-like journey with cosmograms etched on stones from Andean, Valdivia and Maya civilizations, dating back to 2300-2000 BC, 1000-1500 BC and 600 BC respectively. The pieces represent the points of stars in the sky, our place in the universe—us and others. They deny loneliness, that absolute void; they offer proof of time and space, an answer that comes with the sphinx’s question, something inherent to both the arrogance and kindness of earthly intelligence.

IMAGE 1:
Sam Windett b. 1977
'Triple - checkerboard', 2021-22
Oil, acrylic and collaged paper on linen

IMAGE 2:
Installation view of 'Frontal Sphinx' at Mendes Wood DM São Paolo

04/03/2023

✨🪞OPENING TONIGHT🪞'The Mirrored: Laura Grisi | Germaine Kruip'🪞✨

Private view: Saturday 4th March, 6-9pm

Germaine Kruip (born 1970) and Laura Grisi (born 1938) never met; the younger artist only encountered Grisi’s work after she had passed away in 2017. And while this missed opportunity is tragic, the remnants of a life’s work—photographic diaries, sculptures and paintings, catalogues, and several interviews—allow Kruip to engage with Grisi nonetheless. The two artists, both deeply interested in optical effects, sensory perception, and how art might engage the concept of time, will “meet” in the same space for the first time in The Mirrored. – Nora Heidorn

Follow link in bio for more details on the exhibition and to read the full essay by 📲

Exhibition continues until 6th April

Installation image 'The Mirrored: Laura Grisi | Germaine Kruip'
📸:

.m.m.a.r.o.b.e.r.t.s.o.n

25/02/2023

✨ OPENING TODAY ✨ Helene Appel ‘On the Cutting Board’ ✨

PV: Saturday 25 February, 3–8 pm

Exhibition continues until 29 April 2023

Helene Appel looks at things and paints them, as faithfully as possible, with consummate skill. She has been doing this since the mid-2000s, training her attention on all manner of subjects – big and small, beautiful and ugly, organic and inorganic. […] For Appel, painting is about entering a relationship with the things she depicts, in which both parties are transformed by their encounter with the other. The artist is led by her subject, altering her canvas size and technique according to its scale and form and texture, but the subject also depends on the artist and her choices to become something entirely new: a painting. The surfaces of her canvases are records of this generative dynamic. With their subtle enchantments, they demonstrate an obvious but rarely acknowledged truth: that painting does not simply present but rather produces reality.” - Gabrielle Schwarz

IMAGES:
Helene Appel
‘Sandbox’, 2023
Acrylic on linen
230 x 190 cm

Courtesy the artist and P420, Bologna

📸: Carlo Favero

21/02/2023

✨OPENING SOON✨’The Mirrored : Laura Grisi | Germaine Kruip✨

Private view: Saturday 4th March, 6-8pm

Exhibition continues until 6th April 2023

The Approach is excited to announce a dual artist exhibition which activates a dialogue between the work of Germaine Kruip (b. 1970) and the late Italian conceptual artist Laura Grisi (1939 - 2017).

A commonality is sought and explored between their respective practices. most prominently their
study of how the passage of time affects our perceptions. such phenomena often stimulate sensor changes in the viewers mind, illustrating the interplay between art and nature.

The exhibition explores ephemerality through the observation of natural phenomena. Titled The Mirrored, Kruip reflects on Grisi's conceptually driven practice, seeking to investigate shared concerns, focussing on the idiom of time and how the act of observation in nature whilst outward, simultaneously provokes internal contemplation.

IMAGE 1:
Laura Grisi
‘Distillations - 3 Months of Looking’, 1970 (detail)

IMAGE 2:
Germaine Kruip
‘The Illuminated Wind’, 2023

.m.m.a.r.o.b.e.r.t.s.o.n

Address

47 Approach Road, Fl 1st
London
E29

Telephone

+442089833878

Website

http://theapproach.co.uk/contact/

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