The Shape of Light

THE SHAPE OF LIGHT
A group exhibition on light, shadow and the structure of the painted image
Well Hung, London
Thursday 17 September – Saturday 17 October

Exhibition Statement
The Shape of Light brings together five painters whose distinct practices meet through a shared sensitivity to sunlight, shadow, colour and constructed space.
The exhibition uses light as a curatorial thread rather than a fixed subject. Across the selected works, sunlight falls across walls, floors, figures, objects and architectural surfaces, altering how each space is seen and felt. It sharpens edges, flattens façades, divides interiors, intensifies colour and gives ordinary scenes a heightened sense of stillness or tension.
Shadow carries equal importance. Rather than appearing simply as the absence of light, it becomes a form in its own right: a shape that can imply presence, anchor a figure, interrupt a room, or give weight to an otherwise quiet image.
Moving between figure, interior, still life and architecture, The Shape of Light looks at how painters use light not only to illuminate a subject, but to structure one. For some artists, this appears through hard-edged geometry and cast shadow; for others, through domestic space, emotional presence, colour, atmosphere or the relationship between a figure and the room around it.
Together, the works create a focused conversation around the physical and emotional charge of sunlight: how it lands, divides, warms, conceals and reveals, and how it turns the everyday into something carefully constructed.
Artists
Ellis King
Ellis King brings a figurative and psychological register to the exhibition. Her paintings centre on the body, selfhood and emotional presence within domestic or intimate settings, with light and shadow often heightening the relationship between figure and room.
Monica Popham
Monica Popham approaches light through architecture and place. Her cropped façades, windows, balconies and sunlit surfaces translate everyday buildings into bold arrangements of colour, shadow and form.
Anna Mac
Anna Mac works across interiors, domestic spaces and everyday scenes, using simplified forms, recurring motifs and flattened colour to create a quiet sense of stillness. In her paintings, light and shadow help structure rooms, pathways, figures and objects within carefully composed images.
BrutalWares
BrutalWares brings a harder-edged architectural voice to the exhibition. Drawing on Brutalist structures and concrete forms, his paintings strip away human detail to focus on the relationship between wall, sky, surface and shadow.
Elizabeth Power
Elizabeth Power offers a looser and more painterly counterpoint. Her interiors and still lifes use heightened colour, pattern and strong sunlight to trace how light moves through a domestic space across the hours of a day, giving quiet, familiar rooms a warm, slightly heightened sense of time and place.