Pull Focus – the upcoming RAG exhibition at Riverside Studios, Hammersmith, 16 March-4 May 2026 follows a busy and productive 2025. In our January newsletter we look forward and back, reflecting and anticipating.
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News from the Chair, Felicity Swan, January 2026
Welcome to RAG’s first newsletter of 2026
Image: Stephen Williams, 2026
40 years on and still going strong
We are all immensely looking forward to our 40th anniversary this year with two celebratory group exhibitions. Particularly exciting is the launch of the Pull Focus exhibition in March at our spiritual home of Riverside Studios, Hammersmith. This will be followed by our 4th successive annual show at the nearby Polish Social & Cultural Centre in the autumn.
RAG is a dynamic and robust artists’ group, one of the most established in London. Founded at Riverside Studios in 1986, we are delighted to boast the continuous membership by several founding members: Lynne Beel, Gill Calvert, Brian Deighton and Stephen Williams – all with a long history of exhibiting, teaching, curatorial practice and writing attached to their names. The group has continued to build and thrive through all these years and last year we were delighted to welcome another three members into the fold: Diana Hare, Jules Sykes and Jan Urbanski.
Making a successful exhibition happen is demanding and we always have a steering group leading the organisation, as well as other no less important roles filled by others. From administration and budget control to graphics and catalogue texts to exhibition design, I have worked out that around half the group is involved one way and another in each.
2025 saw more than 30 members exhibiting in two successful group exhibitions at Riverside Studios and POSK, as well as individuals showing separately or in smaller groups in the UK and abroad. For almost two months last spring, our Riverside Studios show title Do Geese See God was a wonderful palindrome challenging us to come up with some very creative solutions: ‘presenting a question about what, how and who we see, what the limits to our seeing and imagining might be’ (member Peter Blegvad). November saw us back at POSK for the RAG Annual 2025 - another lively display of work representing members’ current interests. The exhibitions were designed by John Potter and each included artists’ talks with selected members discussing their respective practices. (See Exhibitions)
As I write, our deadline for submitting work for Riverside Studios is almost nigh. Though some hard work lies ahead, there is much anticipation in the air, and expectations run high. You are warmly invited to join our celebrations this coming year. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy reading these contributions from fellow members.
Future RAG exhibitions
Pull Focus
16 March – 4 May 2026
Riverside Studios, 101 Queen Caroline Street, Hammersmith, London W6 9BN
RAG Annual 26
18 – 29 October 2026
POSK Gallery, 238-246 King St, Hammersmith, London W6 0RF
For more information please contact: Felicity Swan: Tel 07736 101503 felicity@felicityswan.com
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Discourse by Máire Gartland, January 2026
Art, Politics and Social Conscience
Image: Francisco Goya (1746-1828), ‘The Third of May 1808’, 1814, oil on canvas, 268x347cm, Museo del Prado, Madrid, © Wikimedia public domain
In times of war, social unrest and genocide it is difficult to justify one’s practice
Brian O’Doherty in his foreword to the exhibition Thinking North says “the artist has a theme, a gift, you can’t avoid it.” He was talking about the troubles in Ireland, but it’s just as relevant now. He continues: ”So the questions to ask …Do I have permission to avoid this issue? if I use it, what are my responsibilities to the matter, to myself, to my work?”
Elsewhere in his essay he says: “to make visual art in such a context is to initiate however indirectly a social action.”
This of course is also what musicians, and other artists do. The list of artists responding to terrible times goes back to Goya and beyond. My first encounter with war art was Goya’s Third of May. It was brutal and clear what was going on. Similarly the violence and sheer emotion of Guernica by Picasso cannot fail to move.
Nowadays artists have a wider range of platforms, from film to posters, hoardings and graffiti. Banksy reaches out to the public with his street art, reaching and engaging a wider audience. Guerrila Girls made public art on hoardings and performed in masks to highlight the lack of attention being paid to women artists. Peter Kennard currently makes material that is immediately sharp and to the point, currently using the Palestinian flag and keffiyeh for a powerful image.
Image: Peter Kennard, 'Palestine 2023', print 59.4x42cm, www.stopwar.org.uk
Many musicians address social issues directly. Songs that were sung in the 60s seem equally relevant now. Deportees for example by Woody Guthrie, is completely of our time too. I thought of Pete Seeger singing This land is your land during the ICE evictions in California earlier this year. No change there. Kneecap, in their music, address occupied Ireland and Palestine directly. And embrace the Irish language, which was almost driven out, while they do so.
Yoko Ono has consistently made art for peace and a better world. One of Ono’s pieces from the nineties called ‘Ex it’ consisted of rows of pine coffins with trees in blossom growing from them. It may be old but in the context of war and starvation it is really poignant.
Her recent show at the Tate held a blue boat in a blue room. People were invited to engage with her to message feelings about refugees and the horror of small boats capsizing and lives being put at risk. The Lampadusa cross is another emotional response to the small boats catastrophe. It was made by a local carpenter from parts of a broken boat after more than 300 people died. Such a humane act. Simple but full of feeling.
I'd like to end with a quote from Native American artist Rose B. Simpson: “Art is about finding our way home to our humanity. We take so many wrong turns, and each one is a teacher.”
When will we learn?
Image: Máire Gartland, Babylon’s Burning, oil on canvas, 42x29.7cm, 2024/25
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Discourse by John Potter, January 2026
RAG Annual 25
Image: Peter Blegvad, Thorpeness 2, 2025
My third year of curation
The RAG Annual Exhibition took place 2 – 13 November 2025, showcasing the work of members across an eclectic range of paintings, sculptures, works on paper, photography, digital and mixed media. For the third consecutive year we were hosted by the Polish Cultural Centre, Hammersmith (POSK), where our regular presence is becoming a known feature of their programme, attracting a wider audience of those keen to discover developments within the group through the exhibition and the accompanying afternoon of Artists Talks.
This was my third year curating the show, working with the fantastically well-organised Exhibition Committee over several months to plan the exhibition and get ready for the arrival of the 54 artworks – all of which arrived at POSK over a few hours ahead of the single day we have to install the entire show.
As usual the Gallery Team rose to the occasion, working collaboratively to unwrap everything, attach fixings, hang works, position sculptures, wire-in digital pieces and place the labels. One of the most exciting aspects of the RAG Annual is the array of styles, sizes and media represented by the submissions. However, with no specific theme for the show it can also be a challenge to ensure that the resulting exhibition is both coherent and displays all works to their best advantage.
Our aim was to create a cohesive display which flowed from start to finish, avoiding dark corners and ‘full stops’ on the wall. So, as a starting point for groupings, we considered both the visual appearance and thematic potential of works. A light-hearted ‘forbidden fruits’ and figurative hang acted as the first section, leading into a series of landscapes and abstract works positioned rhythmically across the largest wall. Sculptures were carefully positioned where they had visual or narrative resonance with wall-based pieces. The result (we hope!) was a visually spacious and harmonic hang, in which every piece held its own to engage, surprise and delight visitors and members alike.
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RAG artist profile
Greta Wakil
Image: Greta Wakil’s studio, 2025
Painting as memory, movement, and connection
Painting, for Greta Wakil, is not a fixed act but an unfolding journey. It is, as she describes it, “an adventure to an unknown world,” where images, ideas, and sensations accumulate over time and surface through colour and form. Her work does not begin with rigid plans or prescribed meanings. Instead, it evolves through the slow assimilation of memory, place, and lived experience, gathered through all the senses. The result is a body of work that resists easy categorisation and instead invites the viewer into a world of movement, reflection, and deep connection.
Wakil’s paintings are inseparable from the landscapes and cultures that have shaped her life. Her visual language draws on a rich geography that includes Mesopotamia and its ancient sites, the marshlands of southern Iraq, the mountainous regions of northern Iraq, and the light-filled terrains of Portugal, Spain, and Italy. These places are not presented as literal representations. Rather, they emerge as emotional and atmospheric presences, fragments of land, memory, and weather that drift through her compositions. In this way, Wakil’s work becomes both personal and universal: rooted in specific histories, yet open to wider readings of migration, belonging, and transformation.
Working primarily in oil and watercolour, Wakil allows each medium to respond to different states of perception. Oil offers depth, density, and slow sedimentation of thought, while watercolour carries lightness, transparency, and immediacy. Although her imagery shifts across themes and forms, Wakil is clear that her work does not fit neatly into stylistic compartments. “It is whatever captivates my imagination at the moment,” she notes. This openness allows her to move between abstraction and suggestion, between landscape and inner terrain.
In recent years, her attention has turned increasingly toward the world we now inhabit and the environment we are shaping. The natural elements that recur throughout her paintings, earth, water, sky, are no longer only sources of beauty or memory, but also sites of vulnerability. “All is connected,” she reflects, “life, earth, sky and beyond.” Her work now asks urgent questions about how we live within these systems, and about the responsibilities that accompany human presence.
This ecological and philosophical sensitivity is quietly underpinned by a rigorous academic foundation. Wakil studied History of Art and Architecture at Birkbeck College, University of London, with a particular concentration on Italian Renaissance art. This grounding in classical structure, balance, and human-centred composition continues to inform her painterly instincts, even as her work moves freely into contemporary concerns. The Renaissance interest in harmony, proportion, and the dialogue between humanity and nature finds an indirect yet resonant echo in her own search for coherence within complexity
Wakil has exhibited across the south of England and in London, including with RAG and other artist groups. These exhibitions have traced the steady development of a practice that remains exploratory rather than fixed. Her work speaks to viewers who are willing to look slowly, to allow images to unfold rather than deliver immediate answers.
Ultimately, Greta Wakil’s paintings operate as spaces of inquiry rather than statements of certainty. They invite us to consider how memory is carried by land, how identity is shaped by movement, and how fragile the balance between human life and the natural world has become. In navigating the space between chaos and order, intuition and structure, personal history and shared responsibility, her work offers not conclusions, but possibilities, fields of thought in which the viewer is encouraged to linger, reflect, and connect.
Written by Stephen Williams, research by C Toler
Image: Greta Wakil, Dream City, oil on canvas, 75x100cm, 2010
Selected biography
- Born: St Helens Lancashire
- RAG member since 2008
- Married Abdul Raheen Al-Wakeal – Sculptor (1936 – 2017)
- Lived and worked in Iraq, Portugal, USA.
Presently London UK. - Worked for the United Nations for 35 years.
- Education:
Birkbeck College, University of London: History of Art (Italian Renaissance).
City Lit: Drawing & Printmaking. - Geographical Influences:
Mesopotamia and its ancient sites; the marshlands of southern Iraq; the mountains of northern Iraq; Portugal, Spain, and Italy. - Primary Media:
Oil and watercolour. - Key Themes:
Memory, landscape, migration, human responsibility, nature and the environment.
Image: Greta Wakil, Slow Morning, oil on canvas, 45x60cm, 2025
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RAG Annual 2025: 2-13 November at POSK, London W6 0RF
Image: 'Thorpeness 2' by Peter Blegvad
Riverside Artists Group (RAG) presents its third Annual exhibition at the iconic Polish Social and Cultural Association (POSK) in Hammersmith, West London. Exhibiting 32 artists, including three new members, the show will run from 2-13 November 2025 with Artists’ Talks on Saturday, 8 November at 2.30pm.
Click here to view or download the catalogue
RAG Annual 25 brings together contemporary art from this noted independent group of professional artists. There is a diverse array of artistic practices which reflect a broad spectrum of styles and disciplines. The selected works represent each artist’s current concerns within their working practice.
The exhibition is both visually and intellectually stimulating. Designed and installed by RAG member John Potter, (ex-exhibitions RA), the presentation creates a cohesive and dynamic arrangement. Artworks, unless otherwise stated, are available for purchase, including paintings, drawings, prints, assemblages and sculpture.
Artists' Talk: Saturday 8 November 2.30-4.30pm
Image: John Potter at Artists' Talk during the RAG Annual 24. Photo: Janey Hagger
Once again there are Artists’ Talks which will take place in the Gallery on Saturday, 8 November at 2.30pm. All visitors are welcome to join the conversation which this year will focus on colour. It presents an opportunity to understand more about the process of making art, as well as an individual artist’s way of working.
Join us at POSK to see our art and while there, relax in the lovely Maja Café with delicious coffee, cakes and Polish dishes.
Exhibiting artists
Mike Abrahams, Susan Bazin, Lynne Beel, Peter Blegvad, G Calvert, Jim Cox, Grazyna Cydzik, Emma Davis, Brian Deighton, Josie Deighton, Shona Elrick, Chloe Fremantle, Máire Gartland, Sarah Granville, Aude Grasset, Saadeh-Byreet George, Janey Hagger, Diana Hare, Martin Ireland, Buffy Kimm, James Lawson, Marianne Moore, Jane Oldfield, John Potter, Felicity Swan, Jules A Sykes, Celia Toler, Jan Urbanski, Astrite Vula, Greta Wakil, Miles Watson, Stephen Williams.
Sunday 2 – Thursday 13 November 2025
Free entry: Open daily: 10am-5pm
Private View: Thursday 6 November 6-8pm
Artists’ talks: Saturday 8 November, 2.30-4.30pm
POSK Gallery, 238-246 King St, Hammersmith, London W6 0RF
For more information please contact: Felicity Swan: Tel 07736 101503 felicity@felicityswan.com
Joanna Brendon MBE
Image: Jo at Studland, Dorset
It is with great sadness that Riverside Artists Group announces the death of its valued member Joanna Brendon MBE, 14 July 1944- 14 May 2025.
Joanna joined RAG in 2020 as Covid began and during the difficult Lockdowns when our members supported the group by presenting exhibitions online (insta: @riversideartistsgroup). Although weakened by her own illness, Jo was a conscientious and brilliant person who contributed wholeheartedly to every exhibition.
She was born in Plymouth in 1944, the younger of two children, to her father, Robert Brendon and her mother Josephine (nee Price). Her father owned the family printing firm of Clarke, Doble and Brendon. She was educated at Stover School for Girls in Newton Abbot, Devon.
In her early London years she worked at the New Art Centre in Sloane Street, while also fundraising for Margot Fonteyn’s retirement Gala at the Royal Opera House. Following a chance meeting on a bus, she became the Organising Secretary for the Joost de Blank Memorial Fund (an anti-apartheid charity). Here she organised a fundraising auction at Sotheby’s with contributions from Barbara Hepworth and David Hockney. It was through this work that she became the first director of St John’s, Smith Square where, from 1969-1985, she worked tirelessly overseeing its transition into one of London’s major concert halls. ‘There were so many highlights,’ she wrote: ‘Rostropovich’s first recital in the West, stunning concerts from the famous BBC Lunchtime Concerts, premieres, EBU (European Broadcasting Union) concerts going out to over a dozen countries simultaneously... helped to quickly put it on the musical map of London.’
She received an MBE for her work at St. John’s.
Image: St John's, Smith Square
In 1985 she became ill with rheumatoid arthritis and, with some reluctance, she retired from St. John’s. It did not stop her studying for an MA in print-making, though at the same time she was going blind in one eye. With characteristic fortitude, she decided to write her thesis on the question: Do Visual Artists Need To See? Exploring Alternative Perceptions. Three prints from her Sightlines series are in the permanent collection at the V&A. A larger selection was displayed at the Saatchi Gallery, and the whole series is now on permanent display at Moorfields Eye Hospital.
After her degree she developed her painting and was for a while the Artist in Residence at Brantwood House Museum, home of John Ruskin, in Cumbria.
She also became the chair from 2001 to 2011 of Artists At Home, an organisation “which had been created almost accidentally by a handful of artists down by the river, and took it to the next level, as it grew into a well organised group that represented artists from a wide area, covering Chiswick, Shepherd’s Bush and Hammersmith.” (Bridget Osborne, The Chiswick Calendar).
Jo never let her illness get in the way of her determination to work, and to do things. She took dance classes with Move Into Wellbeing to stay as mobile as she could for as long as she could. Latterly she was supported by the Hammersmith Society of Friends (The Quakers), as well as by her friends. She was always a great encourager of others and in recent years had become a telephone volunteer for the National Rheumatoid Arthritis Society.
Image: Jurassic Coast 1, oil on canvas
“Her expressive landscape-based paintings were essentially about a place, rather than of it. She worked in series, so that one painting informed another, and the gestation period could be months, or even years.” (Sarah Granville, Riverside Artists Group)
Nicholas Usherwood, curator and art critic, explains: "With a landscape subject matter that is often intensely familiar to her, Joanna Brendon’s bold, abstracting way of working creates paintings rich in dramatic feeling and entirely mysterious in character". A three-year old once said: "Do you use magic in your pictures?". (taken from Joanna Brendon, RAG website).
Many will miss Jo, not only for her paintings but also for her enthusiasm, her support and her generosity. She died at home.
A fuller obituary is in the Chiswick Calendar, May 2025 and The Times 16 June 2025
Image: Back Gardens,, charcoal on paper
Instrumental Paintings by John Potter
RAG member: John Potter
“My drawings inspire but they do not define or determine anything. As in music they transport us into the ambiguous realm of the indeterminate” Odilon Redon, An Artists Creed, 1898
Instrumental Paintings is a series of small works created spontaneously without the use of preparatory sketches or underdrawings and constructed as purely abstract images without any narrative other than what the colour alone implies. No visual obligation has been placed upon either the artist or the viewer to create a fixed meaning or representation. Insight and interpretation emerge solely from an emotional response to colour, form and the moment.
Also included in the exhibition are a number of paintings from the Modern Nature series, the title of which was inspired by Maggi Hambling’s description of Derek Jarman’s garden in Dungeness - a place which defied traditional notions of planting to cultivate beauty in a harsh and bleak landscape. The artist describes how “nature and the built environment are in a constant flux of rearranging themselves. People place buildings and boundaries upon nature but eventually these will decay or be destroyed. In my paintings, I lay borders through colour and line but then let the paint run free to create its own shapes and forms in the way that nature cannot be controlled and will eventually burst through human structures. You don’t have to go very far to find areas where humans have built something but it has been reclaimed by nature. It’s on almost every corner”. This constant state of mutability ultimately offers a message of regeneration and hope.
The works are part of the exhibition Echoes Through Nature which pairs John’s paintings with ceramics by Imahiko Kawamura.
Image: detail from Untitled, 2025, acrylic on canvas, 57x42 cm
From: 3-11 May 2025
Private View Friday 2 May 6-9pm
The Ice House, Holland Park, London W8 6LU
Monday-Friday 11am-6pm
Saturday and Sunday 10am-6pm
Admission Free
In association with the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea's Park Services
Do Geese See God? – the upcoming RAG exhibition at Riverside Studios, Hammersmith, 25 March-11 May 2025 follows a busy and productive 2024. In our January newsletter we look forward and back, reflecting and anticipating.
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Discourse by Peter Blegvad, December 2024
Writing on Palindromes
Image: 'Michaelangelo’s God with Geese' by Stephen Williams
'Do geese see god?’ is a palindrome, a symmetrical word-object which reads the same backwards as forwards. Early examples of the form date back to the 1st-century CE (e.g. the Sator Square). Palindromic words (e.g. kayak, radar, deified) and phrases (e.g. Marge let a moody baby doom a telegram, or stiff O dairyman in a myriad of fits) seem to be invested with a kind of magic even when deficient in obvious or ordinary sense. Of course, a lack of obvious sense is not necessarily a deficiency. Playfully considered, ’Do geese see god?’ Is a question about what, how and who we see, what the limits to our seeing and imagining might be.
New exhibition, Do Geese See God?
25 March – 11 May 2025
Riverside Studios, 101 Queen Caroline Street, Hammersmith, London W6 9BN
For more information please contact: Felicity Swan: Tel 07736 101503 felicity@felicityswan.com
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Exhibition listings
RAG artists 2025
January: Natalia Bobrova Nature, Hogarth Club, Airedale Avenue, London / Shona Elrick Under Ice with the Week 45 Collective, 54 the Gallery, Mayfair, London / February: Natalia Bobrova, Parallax Art Fair, Chelsea Old Town Hall, London / Sarah Granville, NEAC, Chris Beetles Gallery, London / March: Stephen Williams Th(is), The Quartz, Feldspar & Mica Gallery in Association with BoxRoom arts, Sennen, Penzance, Cornwall / April: Susan Bazin New Constructivists 2025, Chelsea Library Gallery, London / May: Mike Abrahams Vitrine, Exeter, Devon / June: Natalia Bobrova Artists at Home, Open Studio / Sarah Granville New English Art Club Annual Exhibition, Mall Galleries, London / Felicity Swan Ten Perspectives, One Space, White Noise Projects, The Crypt, London / Felicity Swan KAOS (Kingston Artists Open Studios), Teddington / July: Mike Abrahams Art in Tower Hamlets Cemetery Park, London / August: Natalia Bobrova Creative Mile – Brentford Art Trail / September: Felicity Swan Be(a)sties Friends Forever, KAOS at the Penny School Gallery, Kingston College, Kingston
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Discourse by Janey Hagger, January 2025
Notes on Landscape Painting
Image: Detail, Caspar David Freidrich, 'Chalk Cliffs on Rügen', c.1818 (Wikipedia)
For those artists who work with landscape, it comes with a legacy from which we continue to harvest ideas and technique. It is intimidating, inspiring and rich. And it has been a particularly male-dominated world, from the romantic landscapes of Constable and Gainsborough to the pleasure gardens of the Impressionists. From the intense gaze of Cezanne, to the art of the sublime of Turner and Casper David Friedrich. From English pastorals of Samuel Palmer and John Nash (alongside the WW1 devastation paintings) to the urban landscapes of Leon Kossoff and David Bomberg.
There was a time around the millennium when one had to justify working in paint from the landscape. Today, this attitude has shifted, maybe in response to the climate crises which has brought the natural environment into sharp focus. The work of artists such as Ilse d’Hollander, Lubaina Hamid, Michael Armitage, Mohammed Sami, Anselm Keifer and Peter Doig bring a cinematic freshness to landscape painting. They push the boundaries of the past, embracing what is sometimes a troubled cultural history.
What seems to emerge from the work of these painters is the concept of a human presence, or absence, that brings a hint of an interaction, impact or story. The liminal space between the natural world and the urban or peopled landscape, feels akin to the narrative and framing you may find within film-making. It is not so much around what the eye is literally seeing (although this plays a part), but the interplay between the psychological and the physical. At the same time, it feels as if we are touching base with the first principals of drawing and observation, allowing the final pieces to evolve into an exploration of poetic and painterly skill.
Janey Hagger, Shona Elrick and Felicity Swan showed Painting the Walk at Laudadale House, 4-23 December 2024
Lauderdale House
Image: 'Painting the Walk' at Lauderdale House, Highgate, December 2024
Photo: Shona Elrick
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Discourse by Saadeh-Byreet George, December 2024
Letter from Lebanon
Image: The Green Line that separated west and east Beirut, 1982 (Wikipedia)
Once upon a time, two little girls made their dolls’ tiny dresses from the seamistress’ sewing remnants. They roamed the forests noting birds’ claw marks on the fresh new snows in winter, and the the first poppies of March, going back home only when famished and exhausted. That was mount Lebanon, always haunted by the Rahbani music and our sacred diva Fairuz.
With time, they became more adventurous, going to beach parties, learning new Beatles songs, occasionally watching Maurice Bejart and his ballet troup rehearse on Baalbek’s Jupiter temple steps, attending Joan Baez concerts, reading Sartre, de Beauvoir, Darwish and Adonis, and protesting against the Vietnam war.
Suddenly, monsters rocked their existence along its fault lines, disasters were followed by catastrophes and quakes… Childhood friends were separated…not even my mum’s favourite song “Che Sara Sara…” could help me accept the new realities,,,we had lost our secure paradise.
Recently, Lebanon has been bestowed with the cursed gift of oil and gas. All the Cruellas entered the stage to further shred and balkanise our little nest. And yet, pine forests and the turquoise sea shall always be there and the people of Lebanon shall keep their solar powered “joie de vivre”, hoping for better times?
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Services and supplies
Beyond the gallery walls: Artist films and digital strategies
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Profile
Mark Lemaistre (1960-2024)
Image: Mark Lemaistre running Ubu Books, Brighton Market, c.2024
My Old Friend Mark
It was with great sadness that I learnt of the death of Mark Lemaistre, just before Christmas. Although I hadn’t seen him for 20 years we shared a history on our personal and artistic journeys. In the 1980’s we spent a lot of time together and were there at the inception of the Riverside Artists Group. I am writing here a very personal recollection of the man I knew.
For me Mark was a force of nature. He ploughed his own course through life. He seemed to live on the fringes of society, a bit of a chancer, a lovable rogue! He once told me that when he left school his art teacher advised him not to bother with art college because he’d just waste his time. He advised him if he was to be an artist he’d have to live a bit first and find his own direction.
I first met Mark in Italy in October 1981. I was visiting an artist friend who’d set up a studio in an old farmhouse just outside Siena. Philip ran an open house in the summer. Mark arrived with other guests and just stayed on. He set up an easel in one of the rooms and just wanted to learn what he could from Philip. He paid his way by helping out and foraging for food in the local woods. I recall him looking through books and developing an expertise on local fungi. One day we went on a wild boar hunt with the local farmers. We were ‘beaters’ supposed to keep the line for the hunters, we didn’t see any live beasts that day but came back with a big bag of mushrooms for supper.
The following year when Mark had to return to the UK he eventually moved in with me and a group of friends in Lewisham. Mark was great company and soon endeared himself with the others in the house. There were many long nights debating art, social issues and our joint passion for modern Jazz music. Mark may not have fitted in to any formal education system but he researched widely on the subjects that interested him. He was an intelligent, self-educated man who thrived off the interaction with others. We painted alongside each other. He painted my portrait and we held our first London show together in Greenwich in 1983.
When I moved to West London it was only natural for us to explore the art scene around Hammersmith and Fulham together. I remember the heady days in the mid 1980’s, meeting other artists at the Riverside Studios and establishing RAG. It felt like we were at the start of something bigger, especially going on the exchange programme with the Moscow Union of Artists. Those were the days of Perestroika and the wall coming down in Berlin.
Mark married Louisa in 1989. In the early 90’s they moved to Italy, a small town called San Constantino, south of Napoli. In 1995 I took another trip down south to see him. Together we planned one more artistic adventure. We drove north through Europe with the aim of exploring the German art scene and promoting our work to galleries along the way. In Berlin we secured solo shows in an artist-run Gallery in the east of the city. In 1997 we held our last joint show with the sculptor Lothar Oerthel, Our Country in Der Galerie Der Topfrei Grote, Berlin.
Mark moved back to the UK in the early years of the new millennium. He had had two children with Louisa, Irene and Enrico. The family settled in Brighton where I visited them with my family. It wasn’t long before he secured a place on the Fine Art Master’s Course at Brighton Art College. The last time I saw him was at his graduation show. His marriage to Louisa had ended, but he was looking to his future with a new direction in his work, making sculptural installations.
When I moved to Ireland in 2011 we lost contact. I understand from mutual friends that he married again but it was short-lived. He focused his final years on building a business selling books in Brighton Market. His health deteriorated and about six months ago he collapsed at his stall and was taken to hospital. Following this, I’m told, he struggled to look after his health. He died 28 November 2024. He is survived by his two children. I understand that his ashes will be taken to the house in Italy, the place he loved, in accordance with his wishes.
Mark died young. His story could seem tragic but whenever I ask mutual friends about him, we smile. Sure, he was a hedonist and prone to excess but he was a warm and friendly person. He took great interest in people, and could engage and entertain on a wide range of topics. This point is emphasised by complete strangers online who, on learning of his death, remember the bookseller fondly. He may have lived on the fringes, resisting conformity, but I admire his self-determination; he was both adventurous and courageous, he explored life on his terms. The enduring image for me is of Mark amongst his books, passionate about his learning, bringing humour and good conversation to those of us that knew him.
Richard Day, January 2025
My thanks to Myra Berg and Pete Richards who helped me learn about the passing of our mutual friend.
“The ground rules are loose, they are to follow whatever it is that’s happening and to concentrate on the picture’s unique potential. The picture as subject.”
Mark Lemaistre, RAG Russian catalogue, 1989. Photo: David Ash
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Exhibition listings
RAG 2024
Artists participated in two group shows, RAG Annual 24 at POSK in November and Summer Solstice online in June. Individually, artists featured in over 50 exhibitions nationally and internationally.
Image: John Potter at Artists' Talk during the RAG Annual 24, November
Photo: Janey Hagger
December 2024: Grazyna Cydzik ‘Here and Now’, Oxmarket Contemporary, Chichester / Shona Elrick ‘Winter Exhibition 2024/ 2025’, AKA Fine Art, Cambridge / Shona Elrick, Janey Hagger, Felicity Swan ‘Painting The Walk’, Lauderdale House, Highgate, London / Chloe Fremantle ‘Works (RWS & RE)’, Bankside Gallery, London / Chloe Fremantle ‘Aka Contemporary Art Winter Show’, Cambridge / Chloe Fremantle ‘Winter Group Show’, Linden Hall Studio, Deal, Kent / Sarah Granville ‘Mini Picture Show’, Bankside Gallery, London / Sarah Granville ‘Winter Group Show’, Linden Hall Studio, Deal, Kent / Felicity Swan ‘Painting the Walk’, Lauderdale House, London
Image: The Deputy Mayor of Hammersmith and Fulham, Councillor Daryl Brown attending the POSK Private View, 16 Nov 2024. Photo: Shona Elrick
November: 2024 RAG’s annual exhibition RAG Annual 24, at POSK, Hammersmith included a Saturday Artists' Talk. To read more about RAG Annual 24 and to view the catalogue of works click here / Natalia Bobrova ‘W4 Art & Design’, St Alban's Church, London / Natalia Bobrova ‘Made in Hammersmith and Fulham’, Broadway Center, London / Shona Elrick ‘Beep Biennial Painting Prize’, Elysium Gallery, Swansea / Sarah Granville ‘Birds Over Sea’, 155a Gallery, London
October: Grazyna Cydzik ‘Unfinished Work’, online magazine issue 53, Gallery, Instagram Haus-a-rest / Grazyna Cydzik ‘Dwellings’, Frontier Gallery, Sheffield / Chloe Fremantle ‘Timeless language’, Bookartbookshop, Hoxton, London / Chloe Fremantle ‘220 years of the RWS’, Bankside Gallery, London / Saadeh-Byreet George ‘Artbox Project’, Agnes Nord, Paris, France / Felicity Swan ‘KAOS’ at the Rose Theatre, Kingston-upon-Thames / Stephen Williams ‘Pot au Feu’, La mairie de Miramont-de-Guyenne, Lot et Garonne, France
September: Máire Gartland, Jane Oldfield, Brian Deighton ‘Friends of the Earth’, Turners House, Twickenham / Saadeh-Byreet George ‘Emotions’, virtual exhibition, CISTA Art / Felicity Swan ‘Spectrum’, White Noise Projects at One Paved Court, Richmond
August: Lynne Beel ‘The Spirit’, J M Gallery, Portobello Road, London / Natalia Bobrova ‘The Drowned World’ by Week 45 Collective, 54 Gallery / Natalia Bobrova ‘Brentford Creative Mile’, Musical Museum / Grazyna Cydzik ‘Timeframe’, Cromford Mills Education Room, Derbyshire / Brian Deighton ‘Coastal Currents/Door Series’, Burton Gallery, St Leonards on Sea / Brian Deighton ‘Quaker Arts Network’, Greenbelt Festival, Kettering / Chloe Fremantle ‘Summer Exhibition (RWS & RE)’, Bankside Gallery, London / Máire Gartland ‘Brentford Creative Mile Open Studios’, Studio at London Museum of Water and Steam, Brentford / Felicity Swan, Kingston-upon-Hunte ‘KAOS’ with BBK, Oldenburg, Germany
July: Grazyna Cydzik ‘Summer Exhibition’ The Gallery Green & Stone, London / Saadeh-Byreet George ‘Hide me, Steal me, Be Nice to Me’, Arte.M, Funchal, Madeira, Portugal / Saadeh-Byreet George ‘Blue Planet’, virtual exhibition, Odyssey Global Media / Chloe Fremantle ‘RWS at Linden Hall Studio, Deal, Kent
Image: Detail, Summer Solstice on Instagram, 1-21 June
June: 21 RAG artists Summer Solstice on Instagram (@riversideartistsgroup). To read more and to view the works click here / Mike Abrahams ‘I want to quit my job but don’t know what to do with my life’, Observer Building, Hastings, Sussex / Natalia Bobrova, Hogarth Club, Airedale Avenue, London / Natalia Bobrova ‘A Celebration of Trees’, Commonworks Gallery, Wimbledon / Natalia Bobrova ‘Artists at Home, Open Studio’ / Grazyna Cydzik ‘ArtBoxExpo Basel’, EuroAirport, Basel, Switzerland / Brian Deighton with G. Calvert, Stephen Williams and Celia Toler ‘Riverside Reflections’, Riverside Studios, London / Máire Gartland ‘Stand by Me’, Irish Cultural Centre, Hammersmith, London / Sarah Granville ‘New English Art Club Annual Exhibition’, Mall Galleries, London / Sarah Granville ‘Chelsea Arts Society 75th Annual Open Exhibition’, Chelsea Old Town Hall, London / Felicity Swan ‘Richmond ArtHouse Open Studios’, Teddington
April: Brian Deighton ‘Dark Materials Tell Stories’, JM Gallery, Portobello Road, London / Saadeh-Byreet George ‘Artbox.Project Venezia2’, Cipriate Gallery, Venice, Italy
May: Chloe Fremantle ‘RWS Spring Show’, Bankside Gallery, London / Sarah Granville ‘RE Original Prints’, Bankside Gallery, London
March: Saadeh-Byreet George ‘Beyond Borders’, Take-Two Interactive, Fitzrovia, London / Saadeh-Byreet George ‘Cosmoscope Exhibition’, Torriano House, London / Sarah Granville ‘Royal Institute of Painters in Watercolours 212th Exhibition’, Mall Galleries, London / Sarah Granville ‘London Original Print Fair’, Somerset House, London
February: Natalia Bobrova ‘Parallax Art Fair’, Chelsea Old Town Hall, Kings Road, London
January: Mike Abrahams ‘Exploring grief and loss’, Willesden Gallery, London / Grazyna Cydzik ‘Construction:Disclosure’, Espacio Gallery, London / Sarah Granville ‘Winter Group Show’, Linden Hall Studio, Deal, Kent
Annual Exhibition 2024
'RAG Annual 24' presents the work of 33 artists at the Polish Centre (POSK), 238-246 King St, Hammersmith, London W6 0RF.
The show is a stunning collection that reflects the way practitioners work, juxtaposed against the style or discipline of other members. Self-selected and without theme, the images give a broader appreciation of the current concerns of individual artists.
Following last year’s successful ‘Borders’ show, also at POSK, this year there is an Artists talk on Saturday 9 November. Everyone is welcome to join the discussion, to gain richer insights into an artist’s practice.
Free entry: Open daily: Sunday 3 – Thursday 14 November 2024, 10am-5pm
Private View: Thursday 7 November, 6-8pm
Artists’ talk: Saturday 9 November, 2.30-4.30pm
RAG shows are both visually exciting and thought-provoking. Once again designed and hung by RAG member John Potter (ex-RA exhibitions), there are framed works, canvases, assemblage, combined media and sculpture for sale. Join us at POSK to see and discuss the art. Relax in the lovely Maja Café with delicious coffee, cakes and Polish dishes.
Throughout the exhibition there will be postings of 'RAG Annual 24' on Instagram @riversideartistsgroup.
For more information please contact: Felicity Swan: Tel 07736 101503, felicity@felicityswan.com
Exhibiting artists:
Mike Abrahams, Susan Bazin, Peter Blegvad, Lynne Beel, Natalia Bobrova, Joanna Brendon MBE, Grazyna Cydzik, G. Calvert, Jim Cox, Brian Deighton, Josie Deighton, Emma Davis, Shona Elrick, Chloe Fremantle, Máire Gartland, Saadah George, Sarah Granville, Martin Ireland, Janey Hagger, Buffy Kimm, James Lawson, Seil Lien, Marianne Moore, Jane Oldfield, John Potter, Ryszard Rybicki, Felicity Swan, Sanja Stamenic, Celia Toler, Astrite Vula, Greta Wakil, Miles Watson, Stephen Williams.
For sales of work, please contact artists directly via the artists section of the website.
Keith Ball RIP
Keith Ball and I showed over twenty times together from 1987 – 2005.
He was a founder member of RAG in 1986 and willingly contributed his many talents in setting up RAG’s Exhibitions. He became a curator of unusual spaces until he set up the Commercial Gallery in Commercial Street, East London and then under the name of Commercial Too before the gallery finally closed. As a writer and thinker he founded Everything magazine along with another RAG member Steve Rushton which at first was supported by RAG and then, having managed to gain funding, became an independent and important art publication.
He was a lovely and kind man with a wry and informed sense of humour but in some other ways could be difficult to get to know. However I did get to know him and was very glad of it. He was always ready to make fun of the hypocritical art establishment and was part outsider and part insider - a position he loved to be in.
When I went to his wake I realised the extent of his very diverse friendships which included people from most walks of life, most of whom I had never met or knew. This was reflected in his diverse art practices which were consistently underpinned by a keen intellect and understanding of life, the world and indeed Everything.
His favourite strap line was: “One day this may all make sense – we can only hope not".
Keith was born 16 October 1955 in Cottingham near Hull. He was the youngest of three children, with an older brother, Ralph, and sister Lesley. He grew up in Brough, a village 10 miles west of Hull. Stephen Williams
Image: Remedy (Single Chamber) 1993
A large number of used (Rosehip) teabags were used to build, inside a wet and cold cellar, a much larger than life, super-sized teabag which was plunged in a puddle outlined by a linear metal strip on the floor. Simple measures – a change of function, scale and the multiplication of the one-fold element, created an unexpected context which brought to mind the inconsistencies frequently met whilst looking inside a logically shaped structure of everyday life. The impossibility of measures taken by people to ward off the inevitability of death – the large teabag in the cellar being also reminiscent of a house or a tombstone. Professor Andrzej Syska
Do you Speak English: International Artists Centre, Poznan, Poland, a group show curated by Stephen Williams with works by: Keith Ball, Almuth Tebbenhoff, Peter Kennard, Katharine Meynell, Helen Underwood and Stephen Williams
Creative Mile, the Brentford Art Trail
RAG members: Máire Gartland and Natalia Bobrova
Two RAG artists are participating in the Creative Mile, the Brentford Art Trail in collaboration with the Thames Festival. Natalia Bobrova is presenting work related to the Thames and water in the Musical Museum. Máire Gartland will be showing paintings and includes glass clay assemblage found materials and text that represent her journey over 26 years in her studio that she will be leaving at the end of September. You can find her in Studio 8, London Museum of Water and Steam.
Image: Runaway by Máire Gartland, oil on canvas, 50 x 50cm
From: 1-3 September 2023
Various location throughout Brentford, West London
Creative Mile
Grazyna Cydzik
RAG member: Grazyna Cydzik
Grazyna's work Displaced/Found 2 was sold in the Royal Academy London, Summer Exhibition 2023. The artwork is from her series Displaced – objects collected at various locations along the River Thames Foreshore at low tide.
From: 13 June- 20 August 2023
Royal Academy, London
Royal Academy
From 6-10 September 2023 her painting Still Swimming which alludes to issues around migration is part of the SwissArtExpo and will be displayed in digital form on a screen in Main Station, Zurich, Switzerland. And from 9 September - 14 January 2024 By Torchlight 2 from her Series Displaced will be exhibited in the 170th Annual Open Exhibition, Royal West of England Academy, Bristol.
Kingston Artists Open Studios (KAOS) group show
RAG member: Felicity Swan
Felicity is participating in the Kingston Artists Open Studios (KAOS) group show at the Rose Theatre, Kingston Upon Thames this autumn. The title responds to the mythology of the Lotus Tree, considered to be sacred in many cultures as a symbol of purity and enlightenment. However, in Homer's Odyssey its fruit was the only food eaten by islanders called the Lotus-Eaters (Lotophagi). Eating the fruit induced a pleasant drowsiness and caused people to forget their friends and homes, thus losing their desire to return home in favour of living in idleness.
Image: In search of the Lotus Tree, 2023, Oil on canvas, 100 x 100cm
From: 4 October-4 November 2023
Rose Theatre, 24-26 High Street, Kingston Upon Thames, London KT1 1HL
Kingston Artists Open Studios
Rose Theatre
Sena Shah
RAG member: Sena Shah
Sena has had a busy summer with work selected for the following shows and events:
Riverfront Art Trail - sponsored by the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham and delivered by Riverside Studios. He is one of six prize winners selected to have art on the river front August - October 2023
Two artworks displayed in the Riverside Studios Summer Exhibition August - October 2023
Work accepted into The Other Art Fair, Truman Brewery, Brick Lane, London E1 6QL 12-15 October 2023
Accepted to exhibit in the Affordable Art Fair in Battersea 19-22 October 2023
In June 2023, Sena was accepted into Artcan and was invited to create a bee postcard for the Bees for Development Summer Show and Auction 14 June 2023
From 4 May - 4 June 2023 his work featured in the Metre Square Exhibition at Tom Cox Gallery
Reflections at the Anna Steinhouse Fine Art Gallery
RAG member: Lucille Dweck
Anna Steinhouse Fine Art Studio, 41 Regent’s Park Road, London NW1 7TU
Coastal Currents Arts Festival, Burton Gallery
RAG member: Brian Deighton
Image: detail from Gothic, 2023, acrylic on canvas, 122 x 76cms
Burton Gallery, 5 Marine Court, St Leonards on Sea, East Sussex TN38 ODX
Burton Gallery
Summer at Bankside Gallery
RAG member: Chloe Freemantle
Chloe is showing four small gouaches in the summer group exhibition of (mostly small ) works by RWS & RE members at Bankside Gallery.
Image: Rudbeckia, Oxford Botanic Gardens, gouache on paper, 10 x 15cm
From: 11 August - 7 September 2023
Bankside Gallery, Hopton Street, near Tate Modern
Bankside Gallery
Richmond Art House Open Studios
RAG member: Felicity Swan
Organised this year by Arts Richmond, artists in Teddington, Fulwell and Hampton area opened their studios to the public. Felicity Swan exhibited new and recent paintings alongside potter Carmela Kantorowicz.
Image: Bird flies in the singing wood, 2023, Oil on canvas 120 x 110cm
From: 15-16 and 22-23 July 2023
62 Clarence Road, Teddington, London TW11 0BQ
Richmond Art House Open Studios
Chloe Fremantle
RAG member: Chloe Fremantle
Founded in 1804, the Watercolour Society (RWS) is the oldest and most prestigious watercolour society in the world. Chloe Fremantle showed four paintings in the RWS Spring Exhibition at Bankside Galley on the theme of 'home'.
Image: Art is the only way to run away without leaving home, 2022, mixed media, 18 x 26 cm
From: 24 March - 22 April 2023
Bankside Gallery
Chloe is also showing watercolours in RWS Now at RWS Gallery.
From: 7-21 June
RWS Gallery
Chelsea Physic Garden: Celebrating 350 Years in Paint and Print.
From: 8-22 June
Bankside Gallery
Bedford Park Summer Exhibition, St Michael’s & All Angel’s Church, Bedford Park, Chiswick, W4 1TT
From: 10-15 June
Chelsea Art Society Open, Chelsea Town Hall
From: 14-19 June
Chelsea Art Society
Regeneration at Hansard Mews Gallery curated by Dr Philippa Beale.
From: 22 June- 15 July
Hansard Mews Gallery
A Tall Order
RAG member: G. Calvert
A Tall Order! is an invigorating look at the artwork made and exhibited in Rochdale Art Gallery during the 1980s by a generation of artists, many of whom were women, young, working class and Black. In a letter from 1987, Jill Morgan, Rochdale Art Galley's Exhibition Officer declared, “Our policy is to encourage new audiences for art . . . To change the domination of art by a white middle-class male audience and producer. A tall order!” Its daring and innovative approach to exhibition and education programming positioned it on the national map.
G. Calvert's work features alongside over 80 other artists including Chila Kumari Burman, Terry Atkinson, Claudette Johnson, Rita Keegan, Patsy Mullan, Ingrid Pollard, Veronica Slater, and Keith Piper.
From: 4 February – 6 May 2023
Touchstones was known as Rochdale Art Gallery
Click to read reviews in Art Monthly, Artforum and Touchstones
If I were a house…
RAG member: Helen Scalway
"If you were a house, what house would you be?" asked Helen in her exhibition at London Lighthouse Gallery. With this body of works she explored herself through the visual metaphor of the house, thinking about the self in spatial terms, whereby the house or dwelling becomes a rich metaphor for identity.
Image: A mind in the form of a desk, 2021, watercolour, pencil, wax pastel, crayon on paper, 49.5 x 65.5cm
From: 2 - 28 April 2023
London Lighthouse Gallery & Studio, 18 Lyell Street, London City Island E14 0SZ
Click here to view the catalogue
Catch 23
RAG member: Martin Ireland
To celebrate this years University Boat Race, Putney Pies hosted an exhibition based on this historical rowing race starting near Putney Bridge. Featuring Martin's drawings and paintings along with illustrations by Rachel Hunt, linocuts and original posters of the legendary University race by Anne Hickmott.
From: 23 March - 28 April 2023
Putney Pies, 2 Putney High St, Putney SW15 1SD