London Art Fair: 22-26 January 2025

In recent years, Gallagher has introduced artificial intelligence as a creative partner within his artistic process. Far from replacing his traditional techniques, AI serves as a collaborative tool that bridges analogue mark-making and digital experimentation. Gallagher feeds his previous paintings into the AI, allowing the system to reinterpret and reimagine his work, returning to him unexpected forms and compositions. This cyclical process, where human instinct meets machine-generated imagery, pushes Gallagher’s creative boundaries, often freeing him from representational constraints and reigniting spontaneity in his painting practice. At the heart of Aipe Ascension, Gallagher introduces “Aipe,” a concept blending AI and ape to symbolise the co-evolution of artificial intelligence and humanity. The exhibition examines this

hybrid relationship, where the primal instincts of human creativity meet the algorithmic precision of AI. Across the works, Gallagher explores how technology influences and evolves alongside human expression, resulting in an unexpected co-creation.

Henrik Delehag has a nomadic relationship to his adopted city. Sketchbook always at hand, he gathers faces and places on his long excur- sions. For as long as he can remember, he has been compiling portrait-like studies in pen and ink, inspired by his encounters with the city. These observations have grown into a collection of portraits. He calls them Adults - metaphors for the questions that he continues to raise about the status quo; the cult of Adulthood and the set of ideas that we are governed by, often without any questions asked. The Adults among us and within us.

In these works faces have become contorted, abstracted and rendered in his unique typographic style to capture comprehensively aspects of Adulthood. They have become, for him, reflections of what he considers to be his own shortcomings as a reluctant adult, but equally, reflections of modern society’s failure to question and reimagine the nature and responsibilities of Adulthood.

Solarization is a photographic technique in which the negative or positive film is partially or wholly reversed in tone. This creates a dramatic effect where light areas appear dark and vice versa. The technique was discovered by photographers Man Ray and Lee Miller in the early 20th century.

"The series 'Darklights' by Sebastian Edge draws on the horror cinema genre of 20th century, in which lighting and lens craft subvert and manipulate the viewers fear response. The emanating light appears dark rather than light, subverting the expectation of the old tungsten set light bulb".

Artist Statement

It started as a simple idea. Ironically, even if you google search "idea" the light bulb emoji appears. Photographing vintage lightbulbs was a way to easily flex my eye again in front of a large format camera. When I started printing more for other photographers, I felt my creative side slip when exclusively focusing on honing the skills of my craft as a printer within the darkroom. So, for me, photographing these relics of a bygone era was a logical way to reignite the creative process, a simple idea. In essence a light bulb moment. It seemed funny at the time. I enjoy making things that raise a smile, a play, a pun.  Solarised batteries, solarised bulbs; a mix of old and new. I didn't expect to see a darkness emanating from them. It encapsulated a feeling and a fear response best represented by actors in film. We often hear expressions of 'shining a light in the dark', but these light bulbs shine dark from the light. If I take a hard look at myself, they are symbolic. But they offer a symbolism to the viewer as well. They are at heart, representative of my craft… an idea… and the light that radiates from those ideas.