Based in the UK, Tori Pounds is a fast-rising contemporary painter whose work balances gentleness with emotional depth. Her imagery is grounded in symbolic gestures of intimacy and understanding, creating a space where remembered truth blends with felt reality. Pounds’ paintings often explore the tension between body and soul, reframing everyday moments through a quietly surreal lens. Known for her dreamlike atmosphere, she frequently depicts figures who float between fantasy and realism, inviting viewers to linger in the threshold. ​

With soft tones and warm, atmospheric colour choices, Pounds encourages the eye to wander gently across the canvas, discovering depth within the glow. Her blurred edges and softened contours hint at unresolved sensations, unspoken thoughts that remain shapeless within the composition, present yet unfinished. By blending vulnerability with an inward, reflective gaze, she creates sensual, dreamlike scenes that feel both tranquil and emotionally attentive. 

Discover work by Tori Pounds on Art of Noma

and Artsy
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It’s open until the 5th of October, so you’ve plenty of time to get yourself down to How We Learn To Love. The latest Emma Talbot exhibition is at Compton Verney in Warwickshire. (It’s pronounced Warrick). She’s recently completed a residency in Italy, which she received after winning the Max Mara Prize in 2019. Now living between Emilia and the UK, Emma Talbot is exploring silk paintings with a Medean twist. She wants to portray the Greek mother Medea who killed her sons and draw comparisons to people who send soldiers to war. If a mother sends her sons to war, is she any different to Medea? Is certain death and risk of death the same thing? What if you know your sons will be doing the killing. How do you feel about that? 

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Utilising the flowing and lustrous quality of silk, Emma Talbot paints her images in vivid colour with beautifully designed details. Uncovering the mental anguish and existential dread that grows from thoughts of war, terror, death, and pain, the weeping and screaming of those left behind can only represent the narrative of the beaten. What a tragedy. When the UK Government is considering conscription to boost its military strength, do they realise what effect this will have on the way parents up and down the country will feel about them? I don’t think they do. It’s a good job we can vote every five years.  
 
What Emma Talbot is asking for, is perhaps a world where aggression and killing isn’t accepted anywhere. Maybe the only reason we use it ourselves it because others are already on that platform. Look at Tibet, the pacifist nation under occupation. The notion of putting your life on the line to protect something you value is not uncommon, getting used to the idea of death is the first step.  In a self-centred society where the individual is marketed for and praised, who can blame anyone for never looking in that direction? These people who come from places where life is not so certain and where negative emotions compound over generations, how do we deal with the inevitable outcome?  
 
It’s not that Talbot is war obsessed, she is an emotional creator who delves deep into her own inner landscape with thoughts and feelings manifesting in her art. It’s not just silk, either, she works on animation and sculpture as well as painting in various forms. The reach of her vision stretches into pain points and difficulties that touch most modern folk and probably played a role in the distant past, too. The collection called Magical Thinking looks at how we tell stories about the facts we encounter in the world and turn our lives into a semi fairytale by embellishing on the cues. Like a little game, it can have rules and agendas that completely step out of the real world. Putting away the childish things requires us to recognise them, and perhaps this work helps us to do just that.  
 
Don’t forget, you can get to see Emma Talbot’s work, How We Learn To Love at Warwickshire’s Compton Varney until the 5th of October.  
 
Via The Guardian 
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Featured at the New Museum, and with international acclaim from an expo at the Venice Biennial, Mire Lee is captivating art lovers with her gut-wrenching installations. A fully kinetic and tactile form allows for explorations of the disgusting and the morbidly fascinating.
 
Born in Seoul and living in Amsterdam, Mire Lee stood out from the crowd with her 2022 ceramic entrails. The Endless House: Holes and Drips installation received a range of reviews, with being unable to look away the common denominator. Now displaying in New York’s the New Museum, a fresh batch of creepy creativity is available to admire.
 
The walls have been layered with fabric and wet clay that’s been allowed to flow and expand with the help of a steam machine. A muddy red paint was then applied to give the material a sense of organic origin. Then, to fill the space, a variety of moving sculptures have been placed that are representations of the natural world. Metal and plastic objects are used to build the shapes with fabric and paint to finish the job.
 
The imagination can be left to run free while standing among the grotesque and horror-film-like setting. Walking among the moving sculptures can help bring a nightmarish scene to life as visitors explore and make conscious all the chilling ideas. If you like your thrills to be over the top and designed to disgust, then you’ll be right at home at Mire Lee’s Black Sun exhibition.

​On display in the prominent Regina Gallery in Seoul, South Korea, a vibrant and inventively charming display of colour and shape is currently immersing visitors. Underwater spectra dominate the colour palette chosen by painter and installation artist Jan Kalab. The Czech born artist, who began in the late 80s working with graffiti and street art murals, has created a modern and fascinating array of images that reflect what he glimpses from underwater scenes.
 
Jan Kalab has progressed in his style from the early days, traversing murals and lettering over to 3D images and into sculpture. Now with his paintings on canvas as installation pieces, the whole skillset is lending a lever to his outreach with expressivity. His work has been exhibited as displayed in many high-brow galleries including those in Rio de Janeiro, Shanghai, Paris, London, Miami, and New York. Now once again in the East, the capital of South Korea has been waiting patiently for the work to be displayed with them.
 
Since agreeing to exhibit at the Regina Gallery, Jan Kalab endured the lockdown like the rest of us and any immediate plans were put on hold. Thankfully this has enabled the artist to create this brilliant arrangement of vivid colour and shape work that we can now enjoy in person or online. An enchanting and dream-like amalgam of forms and shades brings an inspired and underwater sense of diving shallow depths and admiring the flora and fauna.
 
Via World Art News
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