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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
17 March – 3 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, 42×29.7cm, 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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