Dolly Thompsett
Another small-scale painter, Thompsett (b. 1969) has just settled into one gallery, Fred London Ltd., where she had her first solo show this spring. She works in paint on canvas, building up layers that give depth to her subjects. She adds glitter, sometimes scattered, sometimes in touches, before finally sealing the work with a thick, jellylike layer of resin. This very gaudiness is in contrast to the bleak subjects in her Mann show—shipwrecks with dark menacing  skies and agitated seas. Earlier works featured historic, romantic narratives, but always underpinned with Thompsett’s great skills as a painter and draftsman.

Sarah Bridgland
What is she? A printmaker? (That was her graduate subject.) A sculptor? (She makes tiny, fascinating “collage cut-outs.”) It’s difficult to say. Bridgland (b. 1982) who graduated from the Royal College of Art only last year, “was extraordinarily confident, her work really marked her out,” at her graduate show, according to her dealer Jane Wyer, and she has been selected for this year’s Bloomberg Art Futures. The tiny, meticulously crafted pieces, with their explosion of references, reflect her obsession with collecting.

Bruno Pacheco
One of the characteristics of today’s generation of young British artists is that many are not British at all. London seems to be a magnet for many young foreign artists, including this Portuguese talent, who mainly paints figurative subjects in a thinly brushed, slightly washed-out palette. His latest series, shown at the new Hollybush Gardens gallery, features group portraits based on images taken from the Internet and reworked, in an examination of individual and collective identity. An earlier series featured groups of clowns—again, an examination of the denial of individuality. Last year Hollybush Gardens showed Pacheco (b. 1974) at Liste in Basel, at Zoo in London and at the Miami NADA fair, and, says gallery director Lisa Panting, “We sold out just like that!”

Phoebe Unwin
This Cambridge-born artist’s first solo show with the Wilkinson Gallery at Frieze last year was a sell-out—to Saatchi. Now exhibitions of her work have mushroomed in Amsterdam, Iceland and Copenhagen, with Jens Faurschou (in a show curated by Max Henry, “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice: Late Picasso & Contemporary Painters”). That’s a fine reference for the Slade graduate, who is just 28. Unwin works on a number of canvases at the same time, flipping backward and forward as if they were pages of a book. But the techniques vary: sometimes she lays down heavily painted strokes in intense colors, at others her brushstrokes are almost transparent.

Georgina Adam is the Art Market Editor for The Art Newspaper and served as ART & ANTIQUES’ Tokyo correspondent. She surveys this month’s London fairs in “Traveling Collector,” page 100 in this issue.

FOR MORE INFORMATION
Fred London Ltd., London. 011.44.20.8981.2987. www.fred-london.com
Hollybush Gardens London. 011.44.20.7739.9651. www.hollybushgardens.co.uk
Maureen Paley Gallery London. 011.44.20.7729.4112. www.maureenpaley.com
Stuart Shave/Modern Art London. 011.44.20.8980.7742. www.modernartinc.com
Wilkinson Gallery London. 011.44.20.8980.2662. www.wilkinsongallery.com
Wyer Gallery London. 011.44.207.223.8433. www.thewyergallery.co.uk