Like a premature spring breeze in the heart of London’s winter… On the elegant fabric of Conduit Street, the doors of Ronchini Gallery’s new space have opened onto a vibrant, colourful world in defiance of the cold outside. But let’s start with a small note: the gallery is currently on holiday break. Closed between 22 December and 2 January, this enchanting display of “tidal” abstractions will be available to experience in person for 14 days starting from early January.
Flourish: Gestural Abstractions in Bloom brings together four women artists from four different geographies, united in the common language of landscape, movement, and metamorphosis.
The exhibition pushes the boundaries of abstraction not only with paint but with physical energy. In works dominated by a “Baroque-like” intensity, the rhythm of nature intertwines with the depth of human emotion. Each brushstroke feels like a harbinger not just of botanical growth, but of an inner transformation.
This inaugural exhibition at Ronchini Gallery’s new Conduit Street venue gathers four distinct artists who conceive of nature not merely as a landscape, but as a profound arena for emotional transmission. Michele Fletcher’s light-filled colour meditations centred on organic growth and rhythm in gardens meet Connie Harrison’s delicate landscapes woven from layers of wax and oil paint inspired by the ancient forests of the United Kingdom. Shuang Jiang’s instinctive brush movements, shaped around cycles of decay and renewal in nature and revolving around trauma and healing, integrate with Shara Mays’ works—formed by intense, energetic strokes that foreground physical labour and transition from the external world to internal moods.
For Ronchini, this exhibition is more than a group gathering; it serves as a beginning that symbolises the gallery’s “flourishing” period and its own evolution in the new address. Fletcher’s canvases that make light palpable, Harrison’s textured lines, Jiang’s energy on the verge of explosion, and Mays’ physical power together pose a vital question to the viewer: Could our connection to nature actually be a reflection of the tides within our own inner world?
