Sunday Salon 36

The curatorial and editorial project for systems, non-objective and reductive artists working in the UK

Sunday Salon 36

Saturation Point London | 2025 Satellite Event for the 8th International Biennale of Non-objective Art. 23 November 2025

Saturation Point presents 'Au delà', one of the British exhibitions running in conjunction with the 8th biennale of non-objective art, curated by Billy Gruner. The biennale originated in Grenoble, France, founded by the late Roland Orépük, with linked locations in Europe, North America and Australia. Its main theme, as for all the artists in this show, is a sense of continuing history, informing and shaping current ideas about non-objective art.

Stu Burke, Deb Covell, Morrissey & Hancock and Theresa Poulton have all made work in response to the beautiful relief work of the seminal British artist, Ben Nicholson.

Theresa Poulton, Stumbling Blocks (2025). Acrylic on paper, 30 x 22 cm

Inspired by Ben Nicholson’s 1936 sculptural relief, Stumbling Blocks explores the tension between flatness and depth through hard-edged geometric abstraction. Although painted on a two-dimensional surface, the work evokes spatial complexity, echoing Nicholson’s carved forms with vibrant tonal shifts and layered colour. This piece marks the beginning of a series of colour studies that re-imagine Nicholson’s neutral sculpture as a dynamic field of chromatic and structural possibilities.

Sculpture, c. 1936, Ben Nicholson

Nicholson’s interest in the ability of a work of art to create space led him to make reliefs and a small number of sculptures. This piece was made from a block of mahogany that Nicholson sawed, planed, sanded and painted white. The way it projects out into the space around it recalls the modernist architecture of the period. In a letter to his estranged wife Winifred, Nicholson wrote: “Cutting wood is easy & the free movement & quickness of the whole thing is refreshing after the tremendous & meticulous concentration of the new ptg”.

Stu Burke, VP 1 , VP 2. ( 2025), Birch ply, acrylic.

Through playful enquiry, Burke’s practice explores the limitations of what painting and sculpture can be, often working between the two, to incite a dialogue between colour, space, material and shape. He creates painterly sculptures and sculptural paintings, never locating them in either discipline, or both simultaneously.

www.stuburke.com

Deb Covell, Red Flux 7 (2025)

Red Flux 7 is made from an acrylic paint skin, formed using a systematic and intuitive process whereby Covell folds, bends and shapes the paint skin into a geometric mutable form.

Morrissey & Hancock, Rotational Drawing