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Hester Finch

@hesterfinchw

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MA RCA, BA Ruskin
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Me n my date @didohallett10 with our paintings at Safehouse last night care of @blinkandyoullmissitart’s beautifully curated exhibition. Also favourite painting pair @scott_mccracken_ and @tmoams. Show runs today and tomorrow, sat 19th and sun 20th Safehouse 1 139 Copeland Road Peckham SE15
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Next up BLINK’s own Dido Hallett @didohallett10 Invites Hester Finch @hesterfinchw BLINK are marking their 10th Room Share with a ‘Guest Curators + 1’ show. In the run up to 10 we will be announcing (in no particular order) the Guest Curators and their +1 PV Friday 18th September 2026 6-9pm Saturday 19th September 12-6pm Sunday 20th September 12-6pm Safehouse 1, 139 Copeland Road, SE15 3SN @blinkandyoullmissitart are doing things a little differently this September. We have invited all our previous Guest Curators to take part in Room Share 10 and to invite an artist of their choice as their + 1. BLINK’s only requirement is that our guest curator’s + 1 has not shown with BLINK before.
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Ingram Prize x LAF Alumni Interview Hester Finch I was doing my Masters in Painting at the Royal College of Art when I applied to the Ingram Prize. The Ingram Prize has an excellent reputation and I used my application as a litmus test to assess the work I was making at the RCA, which had been a shift from what had come before. I submitted two quite different paintings to see what would happen and I was thrilled when one was accepted. I was very honoured to be approached by Jo Baring, Director of the Ingram Collection, to participate in a two person presentation at the London Art Fair in 2025. It was a bonus to be showing alongside Rose Electra Harris, who I have worked with in the past and has become a good friend. It was also an opportunity to get to know Hannah Payne better, who was curating the programme for the fair and whom I had heard good things about via Anna Liber Lewis, who has shown with Hannah for a number of years – Hannah subsequently exhibited a group of my paintings at DEPOT Oxford. The London Art Fair is an amazing platform for reaching new audiences and we were given the opportunity to do a ‘fireside chat’, where I was able to explore more deeply territory around the question of how much information is necessary to give away within an artwork, how many clues does the viewer need and to what purpose, what to hold back and how that tussle is a theme of the work in itself. Having made some shifts in my personal life over the last year, I have had the opportunity to set up a beautiful new studio in south London, in a converted lingerie factory, where I will probably live, work and die. I also spent that time thinking and planning rather than producing. This has given me clarity both in terms of reappraising and finishing earlier work as well as the space to think ambitiously for the next series of paintings. I honestly believe that ultimately good work will win out. Interview: Hannah Payne #IngramPrize2026 Image 1: Credit Sarah Larby
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Venice photo dump! It was such an intense few days connecting with friends new and old around all things art. I think I did something like 90k steps 😅 I loved the Nordic Pavillion and the Michael Armatage and Daniel Crews Chubb shows in Palazzo’s- there are too many to good things to mention. I discovered and loved the work of Shigeo Otake. I didn’t queue for the Austrian Pavillion, despite fomo- it was raining heavily at the precise moment I’d need to decide to queue or not queue… thank you everyone who made it fun and blagged me into places I was definitely not on the guest list for, it was hilarious! @kvduongart @catherine_long_ @lombarditheartist @danny_leyland @hesterfinchw @fredrik0072 @hrhppjp
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Venice Biennale 2026, you’ve been great :) 4th Biennale visit (2017, 2019, 2024, 2026) but 1st during preview week. Lots of spontaneous conversations, event gate crashing, step count tally, aperol spritz, standing eating, seated meals, some great art, amazing architecture all around, gelato in the sun, gelato at midnight. And I showed new work at a collateral group exhibition. With many thanks to the fantastic team at @_artsa.co for making the experience 10/10 and thank you to Daria @punh for selecting my work. Special thanks and appreciation to @umbertagb for taking me under your wings. Lovely to hang out with: RCA ‘24 Painting Crew VAC Team West96 Team and many others Open Wound at Palazzo Nani Bernardo Until 27 May, open daily 10-6pm 61st Venice Biennale In collaboration with Pippy Houldsworth Gallery INTRODUCING: Untitled (Corrente Verde) no 1 Untitled (Corrente Verde) no 2 These new works reflect on water’s beauty, movement, and latent power, drawing from Venice and Vietnam, where waterways shape life and reveal vulnerability. Currents become metaphors for the movement of people and culture, and for historical passage marked by exchange and risk. Recalling Vietnam’s “boat people,” water holds both freedom and danger. Originating through body-based mark-making, the artist’s gestures are translated into a resolved painted surface.
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On Secret Salons, with Anh 🌼 What actually happens at a Secret Salon? You arrive at a studio without knowing whose it is. No Googling beforehand, no homework, no pressure to have the right thing to say. Just a room, an artist (or group of artists), and a small group of people willing to be a little more open than usual. It turns out not knowing is the point. You listen differently. You look differently. You ask the questions you'd normally be too self-conscious to ask. ✨ If you've been to one of our Salons, we'd love to hear from you in the comments 🫶 A moment that stayed with you, an artwork you still think about, an artist that changed your perspective, an unexpected conversation with someone you'd only just met. These are your Nimi, muses of memory. We're now on edition #20, with thousands of Londoners making space for more thoughtful encounters with art and one another. We can't wait to welcome you to another Salon soon! 💌 Snippets from Salons #8, #9, #10 and #12 last year, featuring studio spaces and artworks by @kristina_chan_ @georginastone_ @hesterfinchw @didohallett10 @catherine_long_ @kvduongart @cashesart @gusmondaystudio @shaneberkery 🎥 Filmed by our lovely friends @sevenhoursahead 💛 Londoners | weekend | new friends | secret salon | culture | studio visit | meet connect stroll | curious culture social | art with friends
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‘Flayed man holding his own skin (after Gaspar Becerra)’ (2022) by Matthew Weir.
Blood on paper, 41 x 29 cm (unframed) 50 x 37.5 cm (framed). (b. 1977, Ipswich, UK) Mathew Weir is best known for his highly intricate paintings that explore ideas between the history of representational objects, melancholy, death and beauty. Weir began to make drawings using his own blood in 2021. These drawings look at the role of pain in creative practice. Many images used are sourced from art historical contexts with references to war and apocalyptic scenes. Others invoke the symbols of emotional states such as depression, anxiety and sadness, as well as using details from early modern medical illustration which focus on the body, life and death. ‘The Cauldron of Id’ (2024) by Hester Finch. Oil, gesso, tape and UV print on canvas, 25 x 36 cm. (b. 1981, UK) With an interest in how our day-to-day lives and relationships are filtered through technology, Hester Finch’s practice plays with the crossover between painting and digital media, often combining digitally printed imagery with traditional analogue mediums such as oil and charcoal. She pulls imagery from myriad sources – from Terminator and Robocop to double-ended horses, dick pics and the male life model – exploring ideas of sex, power, violence and the places where pleasure and disgust meet. Her more recent work has included a shift toward working with unorthodox supports such as found domestic fabrics, seeking to create an environmentally sustainable practice that is loaded conceptually but light physically. —— Set within Peckham Rye’s historic Old Waiting Room, 𝙋𝙀𝙇𝙏 explored skin as a charged threshold where memory, transformation, and mortality meet. 𝙋𝙀𝙇𝙏 8 - 17 JANUARY 2026 THE OLD WAITING ROOM PECKHAM RYE STATION, STATION WAY, LONDON, SE15 4RX
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Thank you so much to everyone who ventured out on this very cold night at the beginning of January for the opening of 𝙋𝙀𝙇𝙏 Photos by @jonbakerpeople —— Set within Peckham Rye’s historic Old Waiting Room, 𝙋𝙀𝙇𝙏 explored skin as a charged threshold where memory, transformation, and mortality meet. 𝙋𝙀𝙇𝙏 8 - 17 JANUARY 2026 THE OLD WAITING ROOM PECKHAM RYE STATION, STATION WAY, LONDON, SE15 4RX
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Detail shot from @hesterfinchw’s studio
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This Saturday we are hosting 𝙄𝙉 𝙏𝙃𝙀 𝙁𝙇𝙀𝙎𝙃: 𝗣𝗔𝗡𝗘𝗟 𝗗𝗜𝗦𝗖𝗨𝗦𝗦𝗜𝗢𝗡, moderated by Amah-Rose Abrams with exhibiting artists Kate Dunn, Annie Edwards, Boo Saville, and John Stark. Book via Eventbrite to join us - link in our bio The exhibition is open only a few more days: Thursday 15 January: 11am - 5pm Friday 16 January: 11am - 5pm Saturday 17 January: 11am - 5pm Photography by Ben Deakin @bjdeakin_photography —— Set within Peckham Rye’s historic Old Waiting Room, 𝙋𝙀𝙇𝙏 explores skin as a charged threshold where memory, transformation, and mortality meet. 𝙋𝙀𝙇𝙏 8 - 17 JANUARY 2026 THE OLD WAITING ROOM PECKHAM RYE STATION, STATION WAY, LONDON, SE15 4RX
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Arriving early for a PV means you can really see the work. “Pelt” @ohshprojects at the Old Waiting Room Peckham Rye. 8-17 January. “PELT is a group exhibition presented in January 2026 at the Old Waiting Room, a historic space located above Peckham Rye Station, originally constructed during the Victorian era. The site’s layered history provides a resonant context for an exhibition concerned with the surface as a site of memory, transformation and mortality. The exhibition examines the dual role of skin as both a symbolic and material threshold, a subject long embedded in art history and increasingly central to contemporary discourse surrounding the body. Through painting, sculpture and installation, the participating artists address the visual and cultural tension between the representation of aging flesh and the pursuit of idealised perfection.” Artists Scarlett Budden Poppy Cauchi David Cooper Jamie John Davies Cristiano Di Martino Kate Dunn Annie Edwards Laurence Edwards Ruben Eikebo Hester Finch Hynek Martinec Ana Milenkovic John Moran Boo Saville John Stark Dominic Watson Roger Weiss Mathew Weir
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𝙋𝙀𝙇𝙏 is now open until 17 January at The Old Waiting Room, Peckham Rye Station. Today (Sunday 11 January) we will have a Curator Tour from 2pm-3pm. Opening Times: Sunday 11 January: 11am - 5pm Monday 12 January: By appointment Tuesday 13 January: 11am - 5pm Wednesday 14 January: 11am - 5pm Thursday 15 January: 11am - 9pm Friday 16 January: 11am - 5pm Saturday 17 January: 11am - 5pm Photography by Ben Deakin @bjdeakin_photography —— Set within Peckham Rye’s historic Old Waiting Room, 𝙋𝙀𝙇𝙏 explores skin as a charged threshold where memory, transformation, and mortality meet. 𝙋𝙀𝙇𝙏 8 - 17 JANUARY 2026 THE OLD WAITING ROOM PECKHAM RYE STATION, STATION WAY, LONDON, SE15 4RX
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