Swimming Backwards

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Sid Motion Gallery is pleased to present ‘Swimming Backwards’, a group exhibition of Sunyoung Hwang, Emily Stollery and Henry Ward, which will celebrate their first time showing in the gallery.

The exhibition title is taken from a new painting by Sunyoung Hwang which is included in the exhibition, but also refers to the way in which all three artists explore ideas of play and form, and the shared concerns of chaos and control that they embrace to achieve their gestural works. Through the exploration of surface and spontaneity, these artists employ improvisation, chance and play to create their compositions: dancing on flat surfaces or stepping out into the room. 

Artist Biographies

Sunyoung Hwang (b. 1988, South Korea) is a London based artist who received her BFA in Fine Art from the Slade School of Fine Art, London (2012) and completed a MA in Painting at the Royal College of Art, London (2016). Hwang’s solo shows include: ‘I Feel Guilty About Missing You. Because I Didn’t Feel Guilty About Leaving You’, Galerie ERD, Seoul (2019); ‘The Echoes of Forgotten Nights’, The Chadwell Award 2016-17 Winner’s Exhibition, Nunnery Gallery, London (2018). Recent group exhibitions include: ‘Convergence and Collapse’, Grove Collective, London (2021); ‘Antisocial Isolation’, The Saatchi Gallery, London (2020); ‘Delphian x Guts’, co-curated by Delphian Gallery and Guts Gallery, The Factory, London (2019); ‘Last Night a Brush Saved My Life’, The Address Gallery, Brescia (2019); ‘Fresh Paint’, Messums Wiltshire, Salisbury (2018). Hwang was longlisted for Jackson’s Painting Prize (2020), selected as a finalist for Young Contemporary Talent (2018) and the winner of the Chadwell Award (2016). She has previously participated in Hangar Residency at Hangar Artistic Research Centre, Lisbon (2019) and SÍM Residency at The Association of Icelandic Visual Artists, Reykjavík (2015).

Emily Stollery (b. 1996, Melbourne, Australia) is an artist based in Nottingham. She completed her BA in Fine Art at Nottingham Trent University in 2018. In 2020 had a solo exhibition ‘Tangible nothings and Momentary happenings’ at Four/Four Collective, Primary, in Nottingham, UK. A selection of her recent group exhibitions have included: ‘Inner Escape’, Pave Contemporary, House of Fine Art, London (2020); ‘300 Objects’, London Craft Week, London (2020); ‘Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2019’, South London Gallery, London and Leeds Art Gallery, Leeds (2019); New Art Exchange Open Exhibition, New Art Exchange, Nottingham (2019); ‘Material Narratives’, All Hallows Church, Nottingham (2019); ‘Good for Nothing’, TAC Gallery, Eindhoven, Holland (2019). Stollery was the selected artist for Bloomberg New Contemporaries in 2019, and the recipient of the Pangaea Sculpture Fabrication Award in 2019. In 2018 she was shortlisted for the Woon Prize. Alongside other residencies in the last few years, Stollery was Artist in Residence with Lockbund Sculpture Foundry, as part of the Pangaea Sculpture Production Award 2019.

Henry Ward (b. 1971, London) is a painter who lives and works in London. Ward studied a BA in Painting at Winchester School of Art, a PGCE Art & Design at Goldsmiths and has a PhD from Middlesex University. He is the Creative Director of Freelands Foundation, a charity that supports artists and art education and is widely published, lecturing internationally on approaches to pedagogy. Recent exhibitions include ‘The Drawing Room Biennial’, London (2021); ‘BEEP Biannual 2020’, Elysium Gallery, Swansea (2020); ‘The Wells Contemporary’, Somerset, UK (2020); ‘6 Days in December’, Thameside Gallery, London (2018); ‘ Abracadabra’, AMP Gallery, London (solo, 2018.) Ward has forthcoming solo exhibition, ‘Baffle’, with Aleph Contemporary, London (July 2021). The first substantial publication on his work, ‘Shed Paintings’, was published in 2021.