Soup presents the gallery’s twelfth exhibition, ‘Alone In The Moonlight’, featuring new paintings by Mark Burch, I. Mills and Albie Romero. The exhibition spotlights three emerging artists at an important point in their artistic development, all of whom foreground an emotive and emphatic exploration of memory at the centre of their painting practices. Additionally, all three have an enduring interest in photography as a visual reference for their image-making.
Mark Burch, who completed his MA in Fine Art from the Bath School of Art in 2020, examines our minds’ tendency to daydream, replaying selected memories in a cinematic, nostalgic loop of subconscious desire. Employing found internet imagery,film stills and his own documentary photography as initial points of inspiration, he then digitally collages, crops and edits eachimage to impose his own narrative implications. Burch’s anonymisedfigures hint at our oftenimperfect recall, while his use of chiaroscuro contrasts and bold colour choices nod to the dramatisation of our own past and our readiness to entertain rosy retrospection. Recently, his compositions have begun to include a liberal application of negative space. The asymmetrical,oversized or otherwise prominent borders applied to Burch’s scenic vignettes evoke censoredstoryboard layouts, redacted scrapbook pages or polaroid photograph framing, a further nod toa wider, as yet withheld, narrative at play.
Similarly, I.Mills, a recent graduate of the Slade School of Fine Art’s MFA painting programme,isolates images from their original intention to examine ambience, atmosphere and the collective experience of our shared surroundings. With a multidisciplinary approach to imagemaking that includes the use of collected colour transparency slides to inform her printed and painted works, Mills portrays moments of particular transience – the view from a movingvehicle, a brief encounter with a moth – to replicate those feelings of longing, wanting or wishing. Often working in watercolour on wood panels, Mills embraces the inherent patinationof the wood grain to further obfuscate those fleeting moments, while the addiction of gems, diamantés and stickers to the surface of her paintings awaken a certain childlike wonder and echo photographic backscatter or filmic lens flare.
Finally, Albie Romero, who graduated with an MA in Painting from the Royal College of Art in2024, compares the dogged pursuit of a painting practice to the importance of a religious,spiritual or supernatural belief system. Raised Roman Catholic but adopting agnostic atheism in adulthood, Romero interrogates myth, mysticism, mind-altering substances and theparanormal as ideological alternatives, distilling such overarching concepts into quasi-sacred depictions. Recently, as the result of a relationship breakdown, Romero has begun to yield tomore personal introspection in his work. Using his own medium format photographs as primaryreference points, he exploits the meditative catharsis of painting to expunge particularly melancholic memories, whilst retaining the blurred compositional contrivance that allows for effectual outside interpretation
ALONE IN THE MOONLIGHT, Mark Burch, I. Mills, Albie Romero, 16th January – 22th February, SOUP
About the artist
Mark Burch (b.1996) is a British painter living and working in London. He graduated with an MA in Fine Art from the Bath School of Art in 2020, having previously completed his BA in Fine Art at Southampton
Solent School of Art & Design (2017). Burch’s painting’s explore our mind’s tendency to daydream,
replaying selective memories in a nostalgic, cinematic loop. By collecting, collating and editing preexisting VHS footage, he is able to present scenes from an otherwise unexplained narrative. Both these de-contextualised compositions, as well as a painting style that embraces the digital distortions and disruptions found in archival film, express the imperfections evident in a memory. Instead, emotion is
idealised over accuracy, with feelings such as fear, desire or disgust foregrounded.
In 2023, Burch presented his debut solo exhibition ‘Chasing Rabbits’ at Shipton Gallery in London. Recent group exhibitions include ‘Soft Edge of the Blade’ at Shipton Gallery (London, 2024), ’I dropped my eye into the sea’ at Unit 3 Projects (London, 2024), ’F.O.M.O’ at Roper Gallery (Bath, 2022), ’The death of an object’ at Michael Pennie Gallery (Bath, 2022), ’Bath Society of Artists: 119th Annual Open’ at Victoria Art Gallery (Bath, 2021), ’Of Echoes and Fragments’ at Pound Arts Centre (Corsham, 2021).
I.Mills (b.1995) is a British artist living and working in London. She graduated with an MFA in Painting
from the Slade School of Fine Art in 2024, having previously completed her BA in Fine Art Painting at
Camberwell College of Arts (2018). Mills’ practice examines the atmosphere of images isolated from their original intentions, the collective experience of one’s surroundings and the materiality or metaphor ofshiny, sparkly items or objects. Through varied forms of image making, she contemplates on the nature of journeys and journeying, place and non-place to replicate feelings of transience, mystery, longing and
looking.
Recent group exhibitions include ‘Daisy Chains and Summer Rain’ at ASC Gallery (London, 2024), ’Soup’ at Greatorex Street (London, 2024), ’Open Plan’ Studio Residency at Towner Gallery (Eastbourne, 2022,
’scene in situ’ at The Take Courage Gallery (London, 2019), ’Raiders Of The Lost Art’ at Lewisham Arthouse (London, 2018), ’Act Natural’ at APT Gallery (London, 2018).
Albie Romero (b.1995) is a Spanish painter living and working in London. He graduated with an MA in
Painting from the Royal College of Art in 2024, having previously completed his BA in Fine Art at
Goldsmiths, University of London (2023). Romero’s practice aims to examine the breadth of the human
belief system through an aligned look at the limitation of image making. Having experienced a rigid
Roman Catholic upbringing and the subsequent adoption of agnostic atheism in adulthood, he references religion and mysticism alongside more esoteric interests in conscious-altering entheogens and the paranormal. His paintings, which begin with subjects sourced from found photographs or moving-image archives, serve as an attempt at distilling far-reaching concepts into his own quasi-sacred artefacts.
Recent group exhibitions include ‘West Residency’ Studio Residency w. Studio West (London, 2024),
’Palimpsestic Impressions’ at Arusha Gallery (London, 2024), ’Camera Obscura’ at Cub_ism_ Artspace
(Shanghai, 2024), ’Softer, Softest’ at Guts Gallery (London, 2024), ’Dante’s Inferno’ at Unit London (London, 2024), ’Myths & Dreams’ at Chilli Art Projects (London, 2024), ’Beauty In Chaos’ at Hew Hood Gallery (London, 2024), ’BUFFER 2’ at Guts Gallery (London, 2023).
