Richard Saltoun Gallery is delighted to represent the Estate of Romany Eveleigh and African Canadian artist Jan Wade.
The gallery will debut Eveleigh and Wade’s work in the UK at the upcoming editions of Frieze Masters and 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair respectively.
Romany Eveleigh’s work stands out for her uncompromising sign-based vocabulary rooted in a minimalist aesthetic, which places painting in a philosophical dimension. Born in London in 1934, Eveleigh spent most of her life in Rome, where she married the photojournalist Anna Baldazzi and was introduced to the radical feminist movement led by the lesbian activist Michèle Causse, the artist's most prominent supporter. Working in relative solitude, Eveleigh approached art-making as a form of contemplative mark-making, borrowing techniques and materials from the world of writing and printing.
For her UK debut at Frieze masters, Richard Saltoun Gallery will present a solo booth showcasing the artist’s most important bodies of work, including the Pages series (1972-1974). Richard Saltoun Gallery will represent the Estate of Romany Eveleigh in collaboration with Galerie Bellemare Lambert, Montreal, Canada.
Drawing on her Southern-American roots and African diasporic spiritual practices, Jan Wade's work explores Black post-colonial identity, ethnicity, and spirituality. She produces paintings, textiles and a mixed-media works that feature slogans and symbols - like the cross, guns and money - and are made entirely from found or readymade objects, and recycled materials.
Wade’s formative years were heavily influenced by her local African Methodist Episcopal Church, slave cultures and spiritual practices, the civil rights movement, and Southern US Black culture and aesthetics. Her work stems from personal experience but seeks to articulate a new understanding of her ancestors’ traumas and the discrimination they themselves suffered. Reflecting where she came from and who she is, Wade’s unique artistic journey is marked by empowerment, hope and radical joy.
