In an evocative exploration of resilience, transformation and beauty, Marylebone Gallery proudly presents “How the Light Gets In”, a group exhibition by a collective of current students at City and Guilds of London Art School from the BA, MA Fine Art and MA Carving cohorts, responding to this theme in the disciplines of painting, print, sculpture, and mixed media.
Taking inspiration from Leonard Cohen’s famous lyric — “There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in” — the show gathers contemporary artists whose work grapples with vulnerability, fragmentation, the quiet force of light that emerges through darkness and on how imperfections and flaws are not something to be ashamed of but rather opportunities for growth, understanding and the entry of light and beauty into our lives.
Exhibition dates: 19th - 22nd June
Opening times:
Thursday 19th: 11am - 6pm; Private View 6pm - 9pm RSVP here
Friday 20th: 10am - 6pm
Saturday 21st: 10am - 5pm
Sunday 22nd: 10am - 4pm
Location: Marylebone Gallery - 25 Devonshire Street, London W1G 6PQ
Admission: Free and open to the public
Curated by Margarita Fernandes, Sonia Thomas, Diana Savostaite and Gemma Lawrence, the exhibition includes works by 17 artists, short bios below.
Artist biographies
Rebecca Armstrong In her work Rebecca navigates the space between whimsy and unease, using soft sculpture, found and existing objects, as well as installation, audio and light, to create a world where the familiar and the strange collide. Recurring themes in her work include bodies and emotion, as well as humour, the abject, attraction and repulsion. A former journalist, Rebecca is currently studying BA Fine Art.
Instagram @creatureseditor
Venetia Berry - London-based artist Venetia Berry (b. 1993) explores female identity and desire through the celebration of the body, reclaiming its image through her paintings and its forms through ceramic sculpture. Depicting scenes suspended between a land of mythology and the Garden of Eden, female figures are positioned at the threshold between abstraction and figuration. Berry draws from historical bathing themes, reversing the male gaze and painting with female pleasure at the centre. Figures and landscapes dissolve into one another, creating an ethereal, otherworldly, psychological landscape - one that feels both familiar and just beyond reach, like a fleeting, dreamlike memory steeped in nostalgia.
Instagram @venetiaberry
Richard Burger is a British / Italian painter and MA student who has exhibited at the National Portrait Gallery Portrait Award; Beep Painting Biennial 2024; Wells Art Contemporary 2024, as well as exhibiting in NYC and in Italy. He has taught Tate Modern open-access courses and is the current teaching artist at the Mas de Chausse Painting Retreat.
Instagram @richard_burger
Irene Burkhard -
Instagram @burk_h_art
Alexandra Carus Bowker is a British fine artist, designer and creative educator based in Lancashire, studying for her MA Fine Art. Having studied postgraduate sculpture and drawing at the Heatherley School of Fine Art and the Royal Drawing School on its Drawing Development Year, she is also a qualified Teacher of Design from Goldsmiths College, London. She is a Gold Arts Award Advisor and was invited by the Victoria & Albert Museum to be part of the V&A Innovate project-development team for the 2024-25 challenge. Alexandra’s practice explores expressive possibilities and traditional techniques as a means of investigating materiality, form, and the interplay of light and space. Drawing on historical contexts, her work reflects the tension between human form and natural rhythms, weaving observation, recollection, and imagination to craft both intentional and unintentional narratives which shift between clarity and ambiguity.
Instagram @AlexandraCarusBowker
Eleanor Cowell is a London-based artist. As well as her current MA, she has also studied Drawing and Fine Arts at The Royal Drawing School, Leeds University and the University of the Basque Country. Her work explores the nuances and characteristics of modern communication, describing the boundaries between our online and offline experiences.
Instagram @eljoart
Paul Farmiloe is a stone carver and watercolourist, based in London and studying for his MA carving. He is a passionate advocate for the ethos and teaching methods of City and Guilds of London Art School, with its practical, craft-oriented and historically based approach. His carving includes restoration pieces and direct carving projects, as well as experimental archaeology.
Marcio Fernandes is a figurative painter and printmaker from Goa, India studying for his MA. He has been part of the Sky Landscape Artist of the Year competition, has exhibited at Tate as part of Inside Job for Tate employees, was awarded the late Ravoji V Gaunekar Award in Goa and the Alison Jackson Award from Saatchi art gallery. In 2025, Marcio returned to his roots with a solo exhibition in Goa titled Stories of Goa.
Instagram @roomthepleasure
Margarida Fernandes (b.1991, Porto, Portugal) is a Portuguese-British artist who works with media and oil painting, and is currently studying for her MA in Fine Art. Her work is centred around the perseverance of memory as a key part of identity, of how our memories warp, degrade, evolve over time - and how to achieve this with materials in the studio. The result is more of an artefact that shows signs of having been handled, cherished; the translation of memories as having their own presence, and translating them into physical objects. She has exhibited in various group shows, including at Wells Contemporary, the Falmouth Poly, Green & Stone and the Hampstead Art Society.
Instagram @margaridabf
Annabel Heron’s work imparts sensations of freedom and joy, inviting viewers to step away from restrictive, monitored environments into playgrounds of utopic, boundless wilderness amid hedonistic mountains, lakes, and forests. Imagery drawn from her German childhood is deliberately distanced from its origins, enhancing feelings of euphoria and escape. Heron has deep roots in Germany, France and Cornwall; she feels great affinity with the St Ives School and is also heavily influenced by life-long exposure to the Nabis and German Expressionists. Her work offers an invigorated, powerful perspective on contemporary German art where guilt-free pleasure and joy are finally permitted.
Heron is currently studying for an MA in Fine Art at City & Guilds School of Art. She holds a four-year MA in Art History from St Andrew’s University and has studied at the Royal Drawing School (2015-2016), St. Ives School of Painting (2020-2023), trained under Jennifer Pochinski at the Art Digger Lab, Madrid, studied at the British Institute, Florence, and trained in Old Master sight-size at the atelier London Fine Art Studios. In 2024, Heron participated in a one-year residency collaborating with UAL Camberwell and OCAD Toronto exploring innovative modes of exhibiting internationally, resulting in her immersive-scale, mercurial landscape oil paintings partnering with tiny works coined as “handbag art”. Heron’s work is in private collections in the UK, US and Europe and she is internationally exhibited with recent public and gallery shows in London, Toronto and Frankfurt. Heron works in oil on canvas, paper and aluminum, monoprints in oil and watercolour and ink drawings. Heron lives and works in London.
Instagram @annabel_heron
Gemma Lawrence is a Scottish artist currently living in London. She has a background in environmental sustainability and commissioning collaborative projects between artists and climate experts. She is interested in bringing together the formal elements of drawing, painting and printmaking with research concerning environmental change and shifting scientific understanding of non-human sensory experience. She is currently artist in residence at Eco-civic hub R-Urban in London.
Instagram @gemma.c.lawrence
Jose Moura is a Brazilian artist based in London, studying MA Fine Art having graduated in portraiture at The Heatherley School of Fine Art. He has had group shows at Espacio Gallery London and The Royal Society of Portrait Painters 2024. He was the winner of Mr Heatherley composition prize 2024 and won a silver medal at the National Academy of Plastic Arts ANAP, Brazil 2015/2016. His work explores memories, nature, and human connections through evocative storytelling, capturing emotional traces and how we relate to the natural world.
Instagram @Josfineart
Rachel Mortby lives and works in London. Having studied Fashion BA at Middlesex she worked in the film industry in costume and special effects. She is studying for her MFA at City and Guilds Art College and has exhibited as part of open house and in numerous group shows. Her work revolves around themes from mythology, past and present culture, our animal selves and relationship with the animal world. Rachel creates abstract figurative paintings and fabric sculptures.
Instagram @rachelmortby
Rafael Pedrosa-Dorado is a Spanish artist living in London where he is studying for his MA having previously studied Fine Art at the Universidad Complutense of Madrid. His work explores the importance of the environment that surrounds us and its constant transformation.He was selected for a number of group shows including the ING Discerning Eye exhibition and the Chelsea Art Society Annual Summer Exhibition. He has had solo exhibitions in Madrid, London and Lyon.
Instagram @rafaelpedrosadorado
Marcy Richardson is a Canadian painter and MA Fine Art student at City & Guilds of London Art School. She completed the Turps Off-Site Programme in 2023 and is currently the artist-in-residence at St Mary’s Church, Battersea. Her practice explores themes of human vulnerability, resilience, and socio-political fragility through the use of metaphor and texture. Her work has been exhibited at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, Hastings Contemporary, and in group shows at The Lido Stores Margate, Safehouse Peckham, Amata Benedict Gallery, and Terrace Gallery.
Instagram @marcyrichardson
Tatiana Tescan is a Russian-Israeli artist currently based in the UK. She holds a BA in Fine Art from Coventry University and is currently pursuing an MA in Fine Art at CGLAS. Her recent work explores archetypes, viewing landscape as a medium of collective memory—deeply rooted in consciousness and connecting us to ancient histories and shared human experience. Tatiana has exhibited in group shows including Leamington Spa Artists and Rugby Open.
Instagram @tatianatescan7
Diana Savostaite is a Lithuanian artist living in London who originally graduated from the Vilnius Academy of Fine Art. Currently studying for an MA, she has had a number of solo shows including at Cole Gallery (as a competition winner). She has been selected for the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition twice, the Jackson Art Prize, the Waverton Art prize, the Ruth Borchard Self Portrait Award, Wells Art Contemporary, RIOP, RSBA, the Society of Women Artists Exhibition, and participated in the Radical Residency at Unit 1-Gallery Workshop.
Instagram @diana.savostaite
Sonia Thomas is a multi-disciplinary figurative artist and MA student who is absorbed by interior emotional and psychological states. She has exhibited internationally and was awarded the GF Smith Prize in November 2024 in the Festival of Print. Sonia has just completed a year-long residency on a collaborative project between City and Guilds of London Art School, the University of the Arts in London, and OCAD University, Canada, culminating in shows in Toronto and London, in April and May of this year. She is currently working on a project with The Museum of the Mind in the UK.
Instagram @soniathomasart
