One of London’s key art destinations, Huxley-Parlour Gallery on Swallow Street in Mayfair, recently hosted a highly anticipated opening. “After The Fire,” the first solo exhibition by London-based artist Catherine Long with the city and the gallery, reconfigures abstraction not merely as visual representation but as an “embodied encounter.” Shaped by the artist’s background in contemporary dance and her ongoing somatic practice, these works treat the canvas as a choreographic space—an active field of rhythm and gravity.
Catherine Long’s artistic process centers on the very first bodily sensation that precedes language. Before beginning to paint, she moves her hands across the raw canvas, calibrating scale, reach, and the limits of her own body, turning the surface into a physical “arena.” Once the initial color choice establishes the tonal logic of the work, improvised sessions begin. Working on multiple canvases simultaneously, Long layers the urgency of bodily gestures with processes of drying, observation, and re-intervention. This method transforms the paintings from mere images into physical records of decisions made, revisited, movements performed, and time elapsed.
The artist’s technique is woven around the concepts of “accumulation and memory.” Thick, raised lines created with oil sticks and dense paint contours remain as an “inner skeleton” on the surface even when overpainted. This structural resilience constructs a form of memory within the painting: past layers are both concealed beneath the surface and made palpably present. Long’s practice joins the tradition of painters who define the canvas as a sensory apparatus, bypassing narrative explanation to aim for direct emotional transfer.
Catherine Long invites the viewer into what she calls kinesthetic empathy—a physiological resonance. Here, looking becomes more than visual scanning; it transforms into a bodily experience. Through this exhibition, the artist lays bare abstraction’s capacity to speak directly to the body, unbound by any prescribed formula, in all its naked immediacy.
Exhibition Details:
Artist: Catherine Long
Exhibition Title: After The Fire
Dates: 23 January – 28 February 2026
Venue: Huxley-Parlour Gallery, 3–5 Swallow Street, London
