creative debuts are thrilled to partner with the paul mellon centre and showcase 50 artworks from a range of talented artists from our artist community. with the artwork refreshing every 6 months, it’s a great place to check out tomorrow’s creative superstars. ”

- Calum Hall, Creative Debuts

FEATURED ARTISTS.

  • Aislinnis a Zambian/Northern Irish illustrator based in Londonwhere she is reading a Masters in History of African Art inLondon. She uses portraiture to empower and aim to normalise and represent Black female narratives in the art world using anAfro-futuristic approach by placing them at the centre and forefront of nearly every piece.Her work celebrates Blackness in all its beauty and power and challenges Western beauty standards with each Black female being specifically adorned using influences from contemporary and traditional African/African diasporic hairstyles (exploring the versatility of Afro hair), ornamentations and makeup.

  • Almon Adeluwoye spends her time between London and Copenhagen. She is an artist and guest curator who specialises in contemporary figurative work and bold landscapes. Graduated from the University of Arts London – ChelseaDesign School, where she combined performance and photography to create public works of art and video installations. These art works appeared on The LondonUnderground, Battersea Art Centre, Debenhams PLC, andCentral Middlesex Hospital.

  • Vasili’s work is inspired by urban decay, particularly decay in posters and billboards, which has developed into abstracts referencing nature. The forms in his work empower the audience to create their own definitions and experiences. The overall theme of his work is to explore the hidden beauty of urban decay, encouraging the audience to approach the subject from a different angle or lens. The juxtaposition of finding a more traditional beauty from anon-traditional starting point of urban decay is the driving force behind Vasili’s art.

  • Dave came to screen printing pretty late in life and has now become totally possessed by it. Anytime that he's not in the studio printing, you will find him trawling around auction sites and flea markets looking for interesting found images and ephemera that he can try and print onto. In a past life, Dave spent over 35 years working in advertising, co-founding several acclaimed creative agencies. He uses the techniques of mass communication and propaganda to create evocative pieces that connect in an emotive and humorous way.

  • Dorcas Magbadelo draws inspiration from the Black women she encounters in her daily life. Incorporating elements of her Nigerian heritage, Magbadelo uses striking colours and patterns to centre these women and captureBlack womanhood and Black girl joy.Largely self taught; Dorcas’ road to illustration includes pitstops studying Investment & Finance at University, working as a social media manager for a life coach and an administrator in a sixth form. It was a trip to the Brooklyn Museum in 2014 that reignited her love for creating.

  • Eve De Haan's portfolio is replete with neon artworks, each sharing a different story, thought or catchphrase through shorts nippets of text. It's an approach that developed out of her theology degree, where she realised encapsulating narratives through the written word was the best way to evoke collective emotions in an audience. Neon has allowed her to explore"how malleable definitions of words and phrases can be". Eve's artworks probe topics including technology, youth culture, and relationships. Eve takes inspiration from her everyday experiences and she describes her practice as consolidating her thoughts and putting them out into the world. Eve provides tantalising beginnings that allow the viewer "to complete the story themselves."

  • Gyles aka Gyloillustrations is an vector and line artist from East London. He first discovered his creative side in his early teens until other things got in the way. Along side working in a school, he later rediscovered this creative side during lockdown. Drawing inspiration from Black culture, his art is a way representing Black beauty throughout Black community.

  • I have always been fascinated by the world around me:particularly where life, art and storytelling collide. After decades of working in advertising and design it dawned on me that there was more to life than selling people shit they don’t need.Having worked with clients in the luxury goods market for quite a while, I found it hard to understand how some individuals had more wealth than entire countries. And so, I created Rich Enough to be Batman. I knew then that I wanted any art I made to be topical, political and to challenge the conventions of our lifestyles and the world we live in today.

  • Joke Amusan is a German-Nigerian textile artist based inLondon, England. Her art practice highlights the experiences and complex beauty of what it means to be aBlack woman – through the exploration of identity and heritage. Joke’s art pieces are conversational, encouraging women to come together to share their stories and to embrace who they are unapologetically. Her work has been exhibited in the UK, USA, and Switzerland. In 2022 she was nominated for the “Female Founder” award in TheIndependent Awards. In 2023 she was a finalist in TheIngram Prize.

  • Lois O’Hara is a Brighton-based artist and designer who creates joyful hand-painted murals, and illustrations. Her signature aesthetic uses wavy shapes and patterns in bold colour combinations. Working mainly in public spaces, O’Hara is interested in the positive effects colour can have on people and places. She comments: ‘I’m interested in capturing the fluidity of an image in motion.’ Working with colour that pops out from often dull urban landscapes, Lois’s work explores how inserting bright splashes of colour can have a positive effect on people, places, and mental health.

  • Primarily a painter, London based Small has a strong, compelling style, often choosing discarded objects like car bonnets or old signs instead of canvas for his work. “The theme of my work is young, dispossessed people: individuals who feel undervalued, who don’t have a voice, who get looked over.”Small explains how the urban debris he paints on becomes symbolic of the feeling of being without value: “I thought it’d be interesting to connect the two – that oven door, that shelving unit, that piece of trash to someone – I don’t see it like that, I see that it can be something beautiful and worthwhile. That’s how I see our young people too. Let’s look at their potential, at the hope that’s in all of them.

  • Michelle has been printing one-off textile pieces for nearly thirty years. After finishing her textile degree at Goldsmiths college, she was one of the makers selected for and awarded a Crafts Council Setting-Up Grant in 1996 and, soon after, became a member of Design Nation. Later on she added to her skills and studied digital fine art and also took an Artists’ in Education course, which resulted in several art residencies within primary schools. She has since taught textile printing at the Sackler Centre for ArtEducation within Dulwich Picture Gallery.

  • Nick Smith, born in 1980, is a contemporary Scottish artist celebrated for his distinctive, pixelated style that seamlessly blends imagery with pixels and bridges fine art with popular culture. His artistic journey took off in 2011 with his colour swatch recreation of Warhol’s Marilyn, laying the groundwork for his innovative approach.Smith’s work masterfully combines image and text, offering a rich exploration of contemporary cultural icons and art historical themes. His art fosters intimate engagement, featuring pixelated images that crystallise from afar and narrative texts that draw viewers in for a closer look.

  • Nilupa Yasmin is an award-winning artist and educator with a primarily lens-based practice. She explores the principles of art and craft and the expanded materiality within photography.Yasmin is interested in the notion of culture, self-identity, and anthropology. Whilst investigating ideals and traditions that are close to home, she repeatedly draws upon her own identity through gender, religion and her British Bangladeshi culture and heritage. An element of her practice focuses on socially engaged photography, she works collaboratively with various communities to produce and curate works of art.

  • Bristol based, visual artist Oshii combines bold colours with layered compositions to a multi-disciplinary practice to produce fine art which challenges social narratives, shares history, explores social and political issues and evokes dialogue.

  • In Princewill’s artworks, he aims to examine the inherent unity that lies within the diverse tapestry of humanity. With an overlay of the human muscles over the skin, Princewill seeks to highlight the fundamental sameness that underlines our physical existence, transcending the superficial variations across skin types, races and nationalities.

  • Saki is a Japanese painter based in London. She first started to experiment with a street art scene in 2009. Her art evolved and grew to full-scale portrait as she too grew.Her art features a delicate yet vibrant imagery of female figures with intricate patterns on the canvas which draws inspiration from traditional Japanese art, classical paintings to mythology throughout history.Saki's versatile use of different mediums from oil paint to gold leaf creates an eye-catching visual language that demands attention.

  • Shai Digital is a self taught artist whose work is centred around her passion for storytelling and is heavily influenced by herGhanaian and British background. Each piece vibrantly embodies different aspects of Black culture and experiences.Specialising in portraits, my artwork vibrantly embodies different aspects and perspectives of black culture and our experiences. My passion for storytelling inspires my use of fantasy and celestial elements throughout some of my pieces. Lack of representation in the art world is why I fell in love with portraiture, as it gave me a platform to experiment illustrating our expressions, features and hairstyles freely

  • Antique stylist and London based artist Soozy Lipsey uses a wide variety of media to reimagine the ordinary and traditional into fantastical creations imbued with both nostalgia and the macabre. Lipsey’s technique combines the repurposing of objects or images with the uncanny and unexpected, and results in imaginative, arresting works that exist outside of any discernible style or movement.

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