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Lot 5 Collective will be presenting their fourth exhibition, Face Value, at the Royal Opera Arcade Gallery, London, from the 8 – 17th November 2018.

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Words by Rebecca Cameron

Staged at the Royal Opera Arcade Gallery in London, Lot 5 Collective will be holding its fourth exhibition, Face Value, from 8-17 November 2018. The art collective is composed of six artists: Lizet Dingemans, SJ Fuerst, Lucas Garcia, Luca Indraccolo, Helen Masacz and Harriet Spratt.

Each artist is aspiring to use the old to develop and create the new; they want to “reconcile contradictions by applying traditional techniques to modern themes, combining classical beauty with contemporary culture, and uniting expression with representation”.

Lucas Garcia; Sienna?, 2018, Oil on Board, 24 x 18cm

The exhibition, Face Value, will be focused primarily on contemporary portraiture, and will also include a range of International guest artists. These include Felicia Forte, the painter of Time Traveler, (Matthew Napping) which was awarded Second Prize at the 2018 BP Portrait Awards. Her work will be displayed alongside art by the likes of Arvid Antonsen, Scott Eaton, Milo Hartnoll, Emma Hopkins, Stella Ishack, Emanuela de Musis, Shana Levenson, Daniel Sequeira, and Sharn Whitehead.

Face Value hopes to showcase a broad scope of styles and subject matters, though each piece is linked by the artists’ dedication to representational painting, portraiture and contemporary arts' capacity. The aim of the exhibition is to “articulate the complexities of the human condition”. For example, SJ Fuerst’s iconic blend of Pop Art and Classical painting will join together to create mischievous tableaus, which depict elements of contemporary culture - each a slightly contorted version of the familiar.

Luca Indraccolo; SMF•72•1821•12•18•25?, 2018, Oil on Canvas, 140 x 70cm

Meanwhile, Luca Indraccolo will draw his inspiration from the devastating fire that affected the Vesuvius National Park in Italy, during the summer of 2017. Indraccolo used the event as a basis to criticise the global destruction of the natural environment for financial gain. The dramatic string of smoke that rose kilometres into the air is a firm visual device that combines all the paintings in this series.

Artist Helen Masacz’s latest paintings use her passion for music as her inspiration. For her, Face Value represents the paradox between the familiar and unfamiliar, which underlies our contemporary culture. Her painting Technical Ecstasy (2018) is a portrait that reflects the current climate of paranoia and violence in the world and expresses how technology has created the means to destroy us.

For the length of the Face Value exhibition, the Royal Opera Arcade Gallery will be open from 10:30am-6pm, Monday to Saturday, closing at 2 pm on Saturday 17th November. https://www.roa-galleria.com/

Title image: SJ Fuerst; Uh-Huh Honey, 2018, Oil on Canvas, 122 x 122cm