Contemporary Art

ASTRATTO

| Irma Irsara

A massive thank you to everyone who made it to my Private View on Friday night—it was wonderful to share these works with you all and celebrate the launch of ASTRATTO.

If you missed the opening night, the exhibition is now fully live and continuing daily at ART@111 until Tuesday 30th June.

Behind the Technique: Fibre Art
We’ve had some fantastic conversations in the gallery this weekend about the unique physical process behind the collection. These works are created from raw plant fibres and cotton linters. By manipulating wet paper pulp, a layered topography is built up that captures the light and reflects the emotional imprint of changing landscapes, from the Dolomites to London.

If you are local to Highbury, Islington, or Finsbury Park, please do pop in during your walks this week to explore these tactile narratives in person. I am here from 11:00 AM to 6:00 PM daily and would love to show you the details up close.

  • 📍 Venue: ART@111, 111 Highbury Park, London N5 1UB
  • 📅 Dates: Running daily until Tuesday 30th June
  • ⏰ Hours: 11:00 AM – 6:00 PM daily

Thank you again for the wonderful support on our opening weekend, and I hope to see you in the gallery soon!

ART@111

| Irma Irsara

ASTRATTO is an exhibition of selected works, forming a visual passage through changing environments and identities – from my early years arriving in the UK, when I worked in horticulture within urban green spaces, to my present life as a full-time artist.

Nature within the city is a recurring theme, rooted in my upbringing in the Dolomites. Memories of Italian landscapes, light, and aesthetics intersect with the experience of urban life, creating works that become snapshots of environmental, personal, and cultural experience.

Through colour, texture, and abstraction, Astratto explores memory, migration, and the emotional imprint of place. The exhibition reflects the layered relationship between past and present, between where we come from and where we find ourselves now.

Bringing together works from different stages of my practice – including previously unseen pieces – Astratto becomes a meditation on identity, belonging, and transformation.

📍 Venue: Art 111 Gallery, 111 Highbury Park, London, N5 1UB

🗓️ Dates: Thursday 18th June – Tuesday 30th June 2026 (Open daily, 11am – 6pm)

🥂 PRIVATE VIEW: Friday 19th June | 6pm – 9pm
Join us for drinks to celebrate the opening night.
Free entry, all welcome!

Vanishing point – press release

| Irma Irsara

VANISHING POINT
Exhibition of recent mixed media work by Italian contemporary artist Irma Irsara

Irma Irsara’s new exhibition at 54 The Gallery marks a return to painting for an artist whose practice has long embraced a multidisciplinary approach. Her work spans printmaking, artist’s books, installation, fibre art, and video, yet her focus remains on issues relating to the natural environment.

Vanishing Point features large-scale mixed-media paintings on canvas, combining oil and acrylic with elements such as marble sand and flecked gold leaf. A complementary series of smaller works on board incorporates materials recovered from the Thames foreshore at low tide.

In this body of work, the artist deliberately stepped away from the confines of a defined brief or subject matter, allowing the work to emerge organically. This open approach was shaped in part by personal life circumstances.

The resulting works explore themes of space, sky, distance, and the edge of perception – a point of no return. These visual elements become metaphors for loss and memory, with the vanishing point serving as a threshold between presence and absence, here and elsewhere.

Irsara’s art training began at age 13 at the Scuola d’Arte di Ortisei in Italy, followed by the Accademia di Belle Arti di Urbino and further part-time study at St Martin’s School of Art. In addition, she studied Country Care and Conservation at Capel Manor College in Enfield, north London.

END

PRIVATE VIEW:
Tuesday 2 September 2025, 6pm – 9pm

ARTIST’S TALK:
Saturday 6 September 2025, 6pm – 8pm

VANISHING POINT
54 The gallery
54 Shepherd Market, London W1J 7QX

OPENING TIMES:
Monday – Saturday 11am – 8pm
Sunday 11am – 5pm

Night River 52 x 48 cm acrylic oil tempera on gesso 2024
Morphosis (1) 30 cm diameter 2025
Montaggio (4) Choke 20 x 20 cm 2024
Vanishing Point 135 x 135 cm 2025

VANISHING POINT

| Irma Irsara

VANISHING POINT is an exhibition of large-scale mixed-media works on canvas (oil and acrylic), incorporating marble sand and flecked gold leaf inspired by Persian techniques. In addition, a sequence of smaller works on board utilizes material retrieved from the Thames foreshore at low tide.

For this series, I wanted to free myself from the constraints of a precise topic or brief. The decision was shaped by certain circumstances in my personal life – I was also reading Tolstoy’s Art and Anarchy.

What emerged was space, sky, distance and the edge of perception – a point of no return. Connections were made with loss and memory, and the vanishing point became a threshold between here and elsewhere.
I reflected on how physical and emotional boundaries shift and evolve. I became preoccupied with transition, transformation, and captured moments where divisions dissolve.

VANISHING POINT
54 The gallery
54 Shepherd Market, London W1J 7QX

OPENING TIMES:
Monday – Saturday 11am – 8pm
Sunday 11am – 5pm

PRIVATE VIEW:
Tuesday 2 September 2025, 6pm – 9pm

ARTIST’S TALK (refreshments):
Saturday 6 September 2025, 6pm – 8pm

Vanishing Point (2025) 135 x 135 cm acrylic, oil

Gold Leaf

| Irma Irsara

I’m currently working on a series of large canvasses. I’m interested in the technique used in Iranian mosques where gold leaf is sieved to create minute balls of gold. An Iranian restorer explained to me how she uses a restorer’s sieve to achieve the same results. In place of a sieve, I’ve used a strainer, using a soft paintbrush in a circular motion to create points of light.

This series of work will be shown later in the year (Sept) at 54 The Gallery in Mayfair – details to follow.

Tidal Traces

| Irma Irsara

I’m very proud to be one of the featured artists for Totally Thames 2023 (Thames Festival)
This year, I’ll be exhibiting at The Old Operating Theatre Museum and Herb Garret throughout September. Tidal Traces draws attention to issues relating to the River Thames through a series of free-hanging installations, time-lapse video and family workshop. As well as a chance to see my current work, this is an opportunity to see an atmospheric museum that offers a unique insight into the history of medicine and surgery.

THE OLD OPERATING THEATRE MUSEUM
AND HERB GARRET
9a St Thomas St, London, SE1 9RY


In addition to the exhibition, I’ll be holding an evening screening of three video works with Q & A (19th September 6.00 – 8.15pm) where you will also have the opportunity to see the installation and museum for free. Tickets are limited for this so I would urge you to book only if you are definitely attending.

Book tickets

Entry to the exhibition at other times does not require booking but is subject to the museum’s normal admission charge.

OPENING TIMES AND DATES

Fri 1st – Sat 30th Sep 2023

10:30am – 5pm

Museum opening times:
Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays, 10.30am – 5.00pm (last admission is 4.15pm)

Drop-in family workshop:
Sunday 3 September 2023, 11am – 4.30pm
available with paid entry to the museum

Accessibility Guide

TICKETS

Entry price to the museum for exhibition and workshop

Adult: £7.50
Concessions: £6.00
Child 6-16 years: £4.50
Children under 6 years: Free
Carers (with a full paying adult, concession or child ticket): Free
Family (2 adults, 2 children): £18.00, additional child, £1 each

Tidal Traces is supported by
Totally Thames, Team London Bridge and The Old Operating Theater and Herb Garret

TIDAL TRACES

The site-specific installation, continues my exploration of environmental issues, looking at material that finds its way into the Thames through natural phenomena and human activity, and the impact on the health of the river’s eco-system and the surrounding population. Recovering debris from the foreshore at various points along the river – plastic netting, nails, sand, silt, aged wood, charcoal, algae, bones – I create work using video, cyanography, chromatography and micrography to represent both the visible and the invisible, in particular micro fibre plastic and pharmaceutical contaminants.

Multiple elements make up the final site-specific installation which, in part, looks at the pharmaceutical contamination in the river alongside the healing qualities of the apothecary herbs featured in the Herb Garret at the museum.

TIME-LAPSE VIDEO

Metamorphosis (6 min 39 sec) 2019
River Net (9 min 10 sec) 2022
Silt (6 min 10 sec) 2023

The video works, each comprised of a series of time-lapse sequences, are a reflection on our impact on the Thames, including chemical and pharmaceutical discharge into the river leading to, among other things, antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

The work is intended to encourage debate on the effects of our actions on the natural balance and how we can re-establish and maintain healthy ecosystems. I’ve used a range of materials in the creation of the videos including silt, sand and algae, as well as man-made and organic objects retrieved from the foreshore at low tide. Tidal cycles are recreated using small-scale models, shot at 25 second intervals as liquid is slowly drained away. In other sequences, ice has been used to animate the forms. The soundtrack for all videos was created by Jonathan Lambert.

äres

| Irma Irsara

I’m very pleased to be participating in äres, a exhibition of the work of fourteen women associated with the ladino-speaking area of Val Badia (BZ) in Italy.

It’s very significant for me to return to my roots to show my climate-change film Metamorphosis in this special venue, which is less than a kilometer from my family home in the Dolomites. The region has seen significant events in recent years due to climate change, including the collapse of the Marmalada glacier in 2022 or Storm Vaia in 2018 which caused massive damage to the mountain ecosystem, knocking down about eight million cubic metres of timber,

The exhibition is sponsored by EPL – Ert por i Ladins ODV as well as Raiffeisen, Provinia Autonoma di Bolzano and Hotel Pider.

The soundtrack for the video was created by musician and composer Jonathan Lambert.

14 artistes dla Val Badia é arjignades y s’inviëia