Monica Popham features in The Shape of Light exhibition

Monica Popham is one of five painters who will explore the relationship between sunlight, shadow, colour and constructed space in The Shape of Light, an exhibition bringing together the work of Ms Popham, Ellis King, Anna Mac, BrutalWares and Elizabeth Power. 

According to the gallery the exhibition uses light as a common thread across works spanning figurative painting, interiors, still life and architecture. 

“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,” it said.  

Shadow is also treated as a compositional element in its own right, used to suggest presence. 

“Moving between figure, interior, still life and architecture, the exhibition looks at how painters use light not only to illuminate a subject, but to structure one,” said the gallery. 

“For some artists, this appears through hard-edged geometry and cast shadow. For others, it emerges through domestic space, emotional presence, colour, atmosphere and the relationship between a figure and the room around it.” 

The five artists approach these ideas in distinct ways. 

Ms 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,” said the gallery.  

Of the other artists, it said that Ms King's work focuses on the body, selfhood and emotional presence within domestic and intimate settings. Ms Mac works across interiors, domestic spaces and everyday scenes, using simplified forms, recurring motifs and flattened colour. BrutalWares draws on Brutalist architecture and concrete forms, stripping away human detail to focus on walls, sky, surfaces and shadow. Ms Power's interiors and still lifes provide a looser, more painterly approach, using heightened colour, pattern and strong sunlight to follow the movement of light through domestic spaces over the course of a day. 

“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,” said the gallery.  

The Shape of Light exhibition opened on Thursday at the Well Hung Gallery in North London, and will run until Saturday, October 17. Entry is free.