Giulia Ricci & Sarah Chilvers

Ten years after Sarah Chilvers and Giulia Ricci first showed together at our former Margaret Street space, this exhibition follows a recent online showcase of their work, renewing the conversation. It looks back at that earlier exhibition while presenting recent works that reflect how both artists have continued to develop precise, thoughtful and deeply personal approaches to abstraction.

At first glance, Chilvers and Ricci share an interest in systems, repetition and the discipline of working on paper. Yet their works are never simply exercises in order. Each artist uses structure to allow something less predictable to emerge. Control is present, but it is tested by chance, movement, time and the changing conditions of the world around them.

Ricci’s recent Rastrum Drawings extend her long-standing interest in pattern, geometry and the landscape of her childhood in Emilia-Romagna. Made with a five-line nib traditionally associated with musical notation, the works suggest aerial views, ploughed fields, waterways and shifting paths. Their lines carry both rhythm and touch. They also reflect a changing understanding of landscape: no longer only as something ordered and cultivated, but as something fragile, unstable and increasingly shaped by the realities of climate change.

Chilvers’ recent drawings and paintings were made over a concentrated period earlier this year in rural Wales. Using a dice to determine certain decisions, such as colour, direction or the size of a block, she allows chance to enter the work without giving up authorship. Time, too, becomes part of the process, with the duration of making recorded on the reverse of almost every work. Her limited palette of red, blue, yellow, black and white gradually shifts through use, mixing and residue, creating works that feel both systematic and quietly alive.