Cob Gallery

Michael Lombardo | Mother of Pearl | 10 - 30 May Cob Gallery is pleased to present ‘Mother of Pearl’ the UK debut of Los Angeles–based artist Michael Lombardo.   Lombardo’s practice attends closely to material culture and the visual languages of place. Born in Panama and raised in Oklahoma, he moves between these geographies not as fixed identities, but as overlapping systems of memory, belief, and perception. Drawing from personal archives and lived experience, Lombardo paints objects shaped by use and proximity, including flora and fauna, garments, textiles, and keepsakes. Rendered with careful precision, these forms accrue emotional and symbolic weight, held close to the body and marked by touch. Michael Lombardo Lavie Lee, 2026 Oil on linen 22.9 x 17.8 cm 9 x 7 in

Cob Gallery is proud to present the UK debut of Los Angeles–based artist Michael Lombardo. His work explores material culture, memory, and place through intimate depictions of garments and keepsakes. Drawing on his upbringing in Panama and Oklahoma, Lombardo transforms textiles into emotionally resonant images in which personal history, regional identity, and devotional symbolism intersect. In Mother of Pearl, fabric becomes both subject and surface, positioning the everyday as a quiet site of reverence where abstraction and figuration meet. Michael Lombardo | Mother of Pearl 10 - 30 May Opening Saturday 9 May, 5-8pm 84a Lamb’s Conduit St, London, WC1N 3LT Michael Lombardo El Pecos, 2026 Oil on linen 45.7 x 40.6 cm 18 x 16 in

Yi Liu | Where Light Dwells - final day to view ✨ Cob is pleased to present Where Light Dwells - Yi Liu’s second solo exhibition at the gallery. Where Light Dwells marks a pivotal new chapter in Yi Liu’s practice. Conceived as a self-contained body of work, the series departs from her earlier narrative and identity-driven paintings to focus on perception itself where light is not symbolic, but structural, shaping form, colour, and visibility. Drawing from both Eastern and Western traditional iconography, Liu creates suspended, fluid compositions in which mythological figures, animals, and human forms exist in states of transformation. These works unfold through a delicate tension between light and darkness - interdependent forces that define both the pictorial space and an underlying psychological register. Yi Liu Where Light Dwells, 2026 Oil and acrylic on linen 90 x 120 cm 35 3/8 x 47 1/4 in Yi Liu Where Light Dwells, 2026 Oil and acrylic on linen 60 x 50 cm 23 5/8 x 19 3/4 in Yi Liu Where Light Dwells, 2026 Oil and acrylic on linen 60 x 40 cm 23 5/8 x 15 3/4 in

Yi Liu | Where Light Dwells | Until 02 May Cob is pleased to present Where Light Dwells - Yi Liu’s second solo exhibition at the gallery. Where Light Dwells marks a pivotal new chapter in Yi Liu’s practice. Conceived as a self-contained body of work, the series departs from her earlier narrative and identity-driven paintings to focus on perception itself where light is not symbolic, but structural, shaping form, colour, and visibility. Drawing from both Eastern and Western traditional iconography, Liu creates suspended, fluid compositions in which mythological figures, animals, and human forms exist in states of transformation. These works unfold through a delicate tension between light and darkness - interdependent forces that define both the pictorial space and an underlying psychological register. Yi Liu Where Light Dwells, 2026 Oil and acrylic on linen 210 x 150 cm 82 5/8 x 59 in Yi Liu Where Light Dwells, 2026 Oil and acrylic on linen 160 x 150 cm 63 x 59 in

Yi Liu | Where Light Dwells | Until 02 May Cob is pleased to present Where Light Dwells - Yi Liu’s second solo exhibition at the gallery. Where Light Dwells marks a pivotal new chapter in Yi Liu’s practice. Conceived as a self-contained body of work, the series departs from her earlier narrative and identity-driven paintings to focus on perception itself where light is not symbolic, but structural, shaping form, colour, and visibility. Drawing from both Eastern and Western traditional iconography, Liu creates suspended, fluid compositions in which mythological figures, animals, and human forms exist in states of transformation. These works unfold through a delicate tension between light and darkness - interdependent forces that define both the pictorial space and an underlying psychological register. Yi Liu Where Light Dwells, 2026 Oil and acrylic on linen 180 x 300 cm 70 7/8 x 118 1/8 in

Cob is pleased to present Where Light Dwells - Yi Liu’s second solo exhibition at the gallery marking the beginning of a new painting series. Private view Thursday 09 April, 6-8pm Cob, 84a Lamb’s Conduit St, London WC1N 3LT Yi Liu’s practice unfolds through distinct bodies of work, each developed under a single title. This approach treats every series as a self-contained conceptual and painterly world, with its own internal logic and visual language. Previous bodies of work- World Theatre, Searching the Mountains (presented in her debut solo exhibition at Cob), and The Hunt- trace a trajectory in which mythological, psychological, and narrative elements are reconfigured across shifting formal concerns. In these earlier works, Liu drew from traditional Chinese mythologies to construct fluid, ambiguous worlds where human, animal, and divine forms converge. In The Hunt, in particular, these hybrid figures operated within charged narrative spaces - staging desire, pursuit, and power through symbolic encounters that destabilised fixed identities and gendered hierarchies. At the same time, the paintings were shaped by an ongoing negotiation of cultural position - an exploration of Liu’s Eastern identity articulated through the language and techniques of Western painting where questions of translation, displacement, and hybridity remained central. Where Light Dwells marks a decisive departure. Developed following the artist’s residency at Palazzo Monti, this new body of work moves beyond this framework, withdrawing from allegorical narration and questions of cultural positioning toward a more fundamental inquiry into perception itself. The mythic no longer functions as story, but as condition; identity is no longer foregrounded as subject, but subsumed within a broader, more unstable field of seeing.

Jack Davison | Portraits: 14–16 November | Until April 2 Portrait photography has always been at the core of Jack Davison’s practice, the subject he returns to most instinctively amid his many photographic experiments. Portraits: 14–16 November, represents a deliberate effort to reclaim space for his enduring fascination with the human face, approached with renewed restraint and intensity.   Cob Gallery are pleased to present the work in its entirety: all ninety portraits from the series, shown in the gallery and in the city where the project was first conceived. This body of work unites Davison’s lifelong commitment to portraiture with his recent exploration of photopolymer gravure printing, a process that brings tactile depth to the photographic object.   Conceived as the first chapter in an ongoing series, the project began in London, where Davison, in collaboration with casting director Coco Wu, street-cast individuals from across the city and photographed them over three days. What emerges is not a portrait of London, but a more intimate, personal register of encounter and presence.   Installed as an immersive constellation within the gallery, the gravures surround the viewer with a continuous sequence of faces. Seen together, the portraits establish a quiet rhythm between individuality and collectivity. Printed at a deliberately intimate scale, the works function as small vernacular objects, closer in spirit to early mugshots, medieval icons, or Victorian silhouettes than to the monumental gestures of contemporary portraiture. Their modest size asks the viewer to lean in, to look slowly, and to engage in a form of attention that is physical as much as optical.   For further information and to view the full series please follow the link in bio 🔗 @jackdavisonphoto #cobgallery #jackdavison 📸 @jackelliotedwards

Jack Davison | Portraits 14-16 November | Opening Thursday 5 March, 6-8pm Cob Gallery 84a Lambs’s Conduit St, London WC1N 3LT Portrait photography has always been at the core of Jack Davison’s practice, the subject he returns to most instinctively amid his many photographic experiments. Portraits: 14–16 November, represents a deliberate effort to reclaim space for his enduring fascination with the human face, approached with renewed restraint and intensity.   Cob Gallery are pleased to present the work in its entirety: all ninety portraits from the series, shown in the gallery and in the city where the project was first conceived. This body of work unites Davison’s lifelong commitment to portraiture with his recent exploration of photopolymer gravure printing, a process that brings tactile depth to the photographic object.   Conceived as the first chapter in an ongoing series, the project began in London, where Davison, in collaboration with casting director Coco Wu, street-cast individuals from across the city and photographed them over three days. What emerges is not a portrait of London, but a more intimate, personal register of encounter and presence. The presentation coincides with the launch of a new publication, self-published by Davison’s print press Helions and designed by Matt Willey. The book captures the full scope of the project and marks the first volume in an evolving series, produced annually in different cities. The exhibition continues to 2 April. Jack Davison Portraits: 14-16 November (Callum, Alicia, Koko, Theo, Alexandra, Cleo, Holly), 2024 Photopolymer intaglio 29.7 x 21 cm 11 3/4 x 8 1/4 in Edition of 3 plus 2 artist’s proofs

Elli Antoniou | 7 Female Artists to Watch Now | Vogue Italia “Artissima 2025: The 7 Artists You Absolutely Need to Know. For an edition dedicated to a new manifesto for better living, here are the works of seven artists who presented works at the Turin contemporary art fair that offered both concrete and dreamlike answers. The body of work that most closely responds to this year’s theme belongs to Greek artist Elli Antoniou, and is titled Tensile Moments of Dispersion. In the Cob Gallery booth, she imagined a speculative cosmological environment, in which Earth is not the center of the universe, but rather a planet like any other plowing through interstellar space. The central helix-shaped sculpture, made of carved sheet metal, represents a galaxy wrapped around itself, while steel planets and celestial bodies float around it, embedded within the walls, the aftermath of an imaginary collision between the Milky Way and Andromeda. Exploding stars, gravitational pulls, and magnetic fields are no longer invisible forces governing the cosmos; in Elli Antoniou’s work, they take on sublime, magnetic forms forged from steel. Collapse becomes a creative terrain and the starting point for imagining a different way of inhabiting.” A look back at our solo presentation by @elli__antoniou at @artissimafair , as we prepare for her upcoming duo exhibition with @jamiu.agboke at the gallery this June during @londongalleryweekend Elli Antoniou Latent Detail II, 2025 Stainless steel with aluminium frame 21 x 46 cm 8 1/4 x 18 1/8 in Elli Antoniou Latent Detail VI, 2025 Stainless steel with aluminium frame 21 x 16 cm 8 1/4 x 6 1/4 in

Harry Spike | 5 Artists on Our Radar in February 2026 | Artsy Editorial @artsy “In Harry Spike’s enigmatic paintings, anonymous figures emerge from fragmented scenes like misty memories. Through fleeting encounters and lingering kisses, Spike’s male subjects share an intimacy defined by queer love. In his current solo exhibition, “Dig,” on view at Cob, the British artist looks inward to unearth personal memories and a sense of place set against the sweeping valleys of the Peak District in the U.K., where he grew up. Spike’s visual language draws from Neoclassical and Renaissance motifs, creating works that are rooted in art history and reimagined through a contemporary lens. After completing a BFA in painting and printmaking at the Glasgow School of Art, Spike continued his studies at the Royal Drawing School, which informs his current practice. His work has been exhibited at the French House, Mothflower Gallery, the Royal Scottish Academy, and is held in the Royal Collection.” Adeola Gay Harry Spike | Dig | Curated by Eva Karkut-Law Until 28 February Harry Spike Devil’s Arse, 2025 Oil on paper on board 63 x 82 cm 24 3/4 x 32 1/4 in Car park, 2023 Oil on paper on board 42 x 60 cm 16 1/2 x 23 5/8 in Tying Knots, 2024 Acrylic on canvas 45 x 60 cm 17 3/4 x 23 5/8 in

Hello, I’m excited to finally bring the Portraits: 14-16 November project to it’s home turf of London, after it launched last year at Paris Photo. The show will be running from the 6th March - 2nd April at @cobgallery and I’d love for as many of you to see it in person as possible. A book of the work will be published alongside the exhibition, designed as always by @mrwilley , published by @helions_print and with beautiful writing by @barbiedreamhearse , printed by @robstolk.amsterdam . Early copies of the book will be available at the exhibition launch on the 5th March. Now for the more official text 😉🤭😬 Portrait photography has always been at the core of Jack Davison’s practice, the subject he returns to most instinctively amid his many photographic experiments. Portraits: 14–16 November, represents a deliberate effort to reclaim space for his enduring fascination with the human face, approached with renewed restraint and intensity. Cob Gallery are pleased to present the work in its entirety: all ninety portraits from the series, shown in the gallery and in the city where the project was first conceived. This body of work unites Davison’s lifelong commitment to portraiture with his recent exploration of photopolymer gravure printing, a process that brings tactile depth to the photographic object. Conceived as the first chapter in an ongoing series, the project began in London, where Davison, in collaboration with casting director @cococasts , street-cast individuals from across the city and photographed them over three days. What emerges is not a portrait of London, but a more intimate, personal register of encounter and presence. Thanks to everyone for all their hardworking on this project @marsyhildthors #liamthornton #liamtaylor @reinaogawaclarke @philipsmithland @niamhquin @marimarilondon @minititleltd @artichokeprintworkshop @labyrinthphotographicprinting @helions_print Image 1 - Jenna Image 2 - Will Image 4 - Ladeen Image 5 - Jos Image 6 - Georgina

Harry Spike I Dig | Curated by Eva Karkut-Law | Until 26 February “The human form is malleable and transformative in Dig, Harry Spike’s debut solo exhibition, curated by Eva Karkut-Law at Cob Gallery, London. In these paintings, bodies emerge in and out of vivid landscapes, reaching out for some – often obscure – object of desire with blurred, formless faces. This act of erasure carries a specific intent, a way of making viewers reconsider what it is they’re looking at. “For me, when a face appears in an image, our eyes linger on it the longest. Often, I find them even when they are not there,” Spike explains. “It is a device used to imply my distance from the subject. I want to create a sense of push and pull within the space. It almost feels like there is a voyeuristic element at play.”” Sam Moore for @dazed Harry Spike SB 2, 2024 Gouache 52 x 64 cm 20 1/2 x 25 1/4 in Harry Spike SB 7, 2024 Gouache 52 x 64 cm 20 1/2 x 25 1/4 in Harry Spike SB 3, 2024 Gouache 52 x 64 cm 20 1/2 x 25 1/4 in Harry Spike SB 1, 2024 Gouache 52 x 64 cm 20 1/2 x 25 1/4 in