Anna Liber Lewis | Spectral Interference
Saatchi Gallery, Gallery 1, Ground Floor 27 March – 6 May 2026
Presented by Hannah Payne Art
Saatchi Gallery announces Spectral Interference, a major solo exhibition by London-based painter Anna Liber Lewis, presented by Hannah Payne Art, bringing together a new body of work that represents a rupture to her earlier grid-based works. The new works embrace abstraction as a site of risk, embodiment, and perceptual instability.
Across paintings of varying scale, Liber Lewis leaves behind the grid and their earlier line work. Structure is still present, not as a fixed system, but as a generative structure – that can be disrupted, softened, or pushed to breaking point. The new paintings have evolved through cycles of editing and return: surfaces are worked into, scraped back, reactivated, and at times deliberately destabilised. Old works are revisited and altered, reflecting a willingness to give up control in pursuit of something more alive.
Central to this new body of work is an interest in high-stakes painting – the ongoing tension between abstraction and figuration, structure and the body, control, and risk. Influenced by disparate artists such as Helen Frankenthaler and Carroll Dunham, Liber Lewis approaches abstraction as a physical, confronting act, where the mark carries memory, effort, and jeopardy. Gesture operates not as expressive excess but as a record of decision-making, endurance, and doubt.
Liber Lewis, comments: “This body of work comes from a place of risk and continual revision. Painting feels easier now, not because it’s resolved, but because I’m more willing to let go of control. I’m interested in how painting holds the body – how it changes, resists, and carries memory over time. The process depends on being both in control and out of control. It comes from repetition, and from a mental and physical agility: staying limber, warm, and ready for anything.”
Spectral Interference at Saatchi Gallery, brings together a significant group of new and recent works, including paintings such as Embodied Other, My GRB Afterglow, and Very Rare Picture of Earth II, alongside a number of large-scale canvases shown publicly for the first time. Presented at a pivotal moment in Liber Lewis’ career, this exhibition represents her most ambitious institutional presentation to date, following her recent inclusion in the group exhibition Unreal City: Abstract Painting in London at Saatchi Gallery (2024).
–ENDS-
NOTES TO EDITORS
Exhibition details
Anna Liber Lewis
Spectral Interference
27 March – 6 May 2026 Saatchi Gallery, Gallery 1, Ground Floor
Presented by Hannah Payne Art
Private View
Friday 27 March 2026, 6.30–8.30pm – ticket holders to Saatchi Lates or by invitation only.
Image credit: Anna Liber Lewis, Embodied Other, Oil on canvas, 200 x 150 cm. Image courtesy of the Artist and Hannah Payne Art. Photo by Benjamin Deakin.
Anna Liber Lewis (b.1977) lives and works in London. She graduated with a BA from Central Saint Martins in 2001 and was the 2013 recipient of the Genesis Foundation Scholarship to study at the Royal College of Art, gaining an MFA in 2015. She was awarded the Moich Abrahams Prize for Most Innovative Work at The London Group Century Open (2013) and received both the Griffin Arts Prize and the Young Contemporary Talent Prize, supported by the Ingram Collection, in 2017.
Her first solo exhibition took place at Elephant West in 2019, commissioned by Elephant Magazine, and explored a call-and-response relationship between music and painting. This marked the beginning of an ongoing creative collaboration with Four Tet (Kieran Hebden), developed through long-term dialogue between sound and image and later realised through the project Muscle Memory and the EP Anna Painting.
This was followed by a second solo show at The Lightbox, Woking where she was asked to respond to a piece from the Ingram Collection; she chose a work by Eileen Agar. Group exhibitions include Landscape Portrait: Now and Then; Redressing the Balance: Women Artists from the Ingram Collection; WIP at Camden Arts Centre Studio. Recent solo exhibitions include Dazzle Camouflage (solo), Benjamin Parsons × Hannah Payne Art (2023); Group exhibitions include Forms, Galarie pcp, Paris, On the Calculation of Volume, Gerald Moore Gallery (2024) SHAPE SORTER, Marie Jose Gallery, Fragmented Realities, Reflex Gallery, 2022, Amsterdam, Can You Hear It?, Cooke Latham Gallery, London (2022); Life Is Still Life, curated by Naomi Polonsky, The Women’s Art Collection, Cambridge (2022); Sign Systems, Unit London (2022); two-person show, Between the Lines – New Paintings by Anna Liber Lewis and Dominic Beattie, Meakin + Parsons in partnership with Hannah Payne, Oxford (2022). She has shown widely in the UK and Europe, and her work is held in numerous private collections.
Hannah Payne Art is a nomadic gallery platform working between Oxford and London, supporting emerging and mid-career artists through ambitious exhibitions, institutional collaborations, and dialogue-led programming. Hannah Payne Art champions artists at pivotal moments in their careers, supporting the development and presentation of ambitious new work through thoughtfully curated exhibitions and public-facing programming.
Enquiries: [email protected] / +44 (0)7867871823
ABOUT SAATCHI GALLERY
Since 1985, Saatchi Gallery has provided an innovative platform for contemporary art. Exhibitions have presented works by largely unseen young artists, or by international artists whose work has been rarely or never exhibited in the UK. This approach has made the Gallery one of the most recognised names in contemporary art. Since moving to its current 70,000 square feet space in the Duke of York’s Headquarters in Chelsea, London, the Gallery has welcomed over 10 million visitors. The Gallery hosts thousands of school visits annually and has over 6 million followers on social media. In 2019, Saatchi Gallery became a registered charity, beginning a new chapter in its history.
www.saatchigallery.com
Registered Charity Number: 1182328
Address: Saatchi Gallery, Duke of York’s HQ, King’s Rd, Chelsea, London SW3 4RY