Lisa Baker Ltd

ARTIST SPOTLIGHT Benjamin Blanc Benjamin Blanc is a French figurative painter raised between Paris and London, currently completing an MA in Painting at the Royal College of Art after graduating from Central Saint Martins in 2023. Working within the confines of interior spaces, Blanc explores the tensions between bodies — and the friction, or absence of friction, between them. His paintings balance intimacy and unease, drawing on art historical depictions of the grotesque alongside deeply physical, body-aware processes. Painting from memory and sensation, his figures inhabit transitional moments: caught still, mid-gesture, somewhere between instant and event. Through material shifts between malleability and stiffness, his work creates psychologically charged scenes suspended in time. Recent exhibitions include Galerie Peter Gaugy in Brussels, with features in Museletter and Ark Magazine. @bbenjaminblanc Coming soon @hackneyartweek 📷 @stellamcgarvey #hackneyartweek #painting #benjaminblanc #eastlondon

Thank you @londontheinside 💚 Hackney Art Week is Back Bigger and Better for 2026 “Following an inaugural edition last year, Hackney Art Week, a female-founded and free celebration of art, culture and local creativity, is back for 2026. A host of venues across Hackney, including Chats Palace, The Lauriston, The Rose Lipman Building, St Augustine’s Tower, Albers, Numbers Wine, Wilton Way Gallery and ESEACC at The Old Bath House, will be hosting public art, exhibitions, screenings, talks and performances. Artists such as Babak Ganjei, Amelia Troubridge, Jeanne Gourlaouen, Chris Bianchi, Anne McCloy, Martina O’Shea, Richard Yeboah, Annie Frost Nicholson, Tara Darby, Gabriel Prokofiev, and GG the Illustrator, will be showcasing their work. There’ll be a weekend of workshops, open studios and a ceramics market held on Ashwin Street in Dalston, led by V22 Studios, and across the week a selection of limited-edition prints will be released in support of local charity Hackney Giving.” Key Information Dates | Thurs 4th – Sun 14th June 2026 Address | Various Hackney locations For more information | @hackneyartweek Join our mailing list for news, updates, private views, talks and events during Hackney Art Week [email protected] #londonontheinside #hackneyartweek #whatsonlondon #hackney #eastlondon

Deepfake 2019-2020 by @hynekmartinec Oil on canvas, 170 x 240 cm Photo by Paul Plews Represented by @varvararozagalleries Step into the world of Hynek Martinec, a Czech-born, London-based British painter who doesn’t just redefine hyperrealism, he elevates it into philosophical territory. Educated at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, Martinec absorbed a reverence for pre-modern oil techniques: meticulous glazing, chiaroscuro, and Renaissance-level draftsmanship. He later sharpened this discipline during residencies in London and New York, evolving a visual language that draws as much from Rubens and Titian as from Caravaggio and Ribera. Martinec’s canvases are spaces of philosophical tension. He often begins with vintage photographic references, staging scenes that feel historically anchored yet digitally disrupted. Through this, he probes questions of authenticity, temporal layering, and the sacredness of image-making in a post-truth era. His subjects — often ghostlike figures, empty chairs, or fragmented icons — evoke both personal memory and collective myth. Catholic symbolism appears not as doctrine, but as allegory: meditating on themes like transcendence, death, and the illusion of permanence. In 2007, his intimate portrait Zuzana in Paris Studio won the BP Young Artist Award at London’s National Portrait Gallery, catapulting him into a wider public consciousness. Since then, Martinec has exhibited at institutions including the Nationalmuseum Stockholm, Finnish National Gallery, Helsinki, the National Gallery in Prague, DOX Centre for Contemporary Art, Prague and Parafin Gallery, where he continues to shape contemporary figurative painting with an almost spiritual rigour. His brush speaks in centuries. His gaze sees through them. Martinec invites us to witness not just a subject, but the metaphysical weight behind their image — the layers of time, myth, and mortality woven into every stroke. Painting as metaphysics and hyperrealism. Tradition in rebellion. #HynekMartinec #ContemporaryArt #Hyperrealism #FigurativePainting #OldMasters

FOOTWAYS LONDON ⭐️ The streets are part of the programme. Explore Hackney Art Week on foot with Footways’ dedicated walking map — connecting venues via quiet, enjoyable routes. Available ahead of the festival via @footwayslondon and @hackneyartweek #walking #artwalks #hackneyartweek #discoverhackney #walklondon

Jay Yeomans is a UK-based artist working across painting, photography, and collage. For Hackney Art Week, he presents works from his Pool Paintings series at Unlock in Hackney Wick — an experimental Italian restaurant and arts space on the edge of Fish Island, set beside a canal lock. Rooted in a love of architecture, these works begin with collage and evolve into imagined, idyllic spaces — where steps descend into pools and structures invite stillness, drawing the viewer into places of rest and quiet escape. Influenced by American abstract expressionism and pop art, Jay works primarily with oil paint on canvas and wood. His background in photography continues to inform his practice, blending mediums to create layered, immersive compositions. Following his studies in photography, Jay further developed his studio practice through the Turps Hastings off-site programme, refining both his process and visual language. 📍 Hackney Art Week 📍 Unlock, Hackney Wick @paint_etcetera @unlock_e3 #jayyeomans #unlockpizza #hackneywick #hackneyartweek #poolpainting 📷 Farthest Shore - Jay Yeomans 39 x 54 cm oil on wood.

“This free London art festival is massively expanding this summer – it’ll take over a whole borough. Immersive installations, workshops, live music and an art treasure hunt will be free for all to attend this June.” - Time Out Read Time Out’s Hackney Art Week preview: /london/news/this-free-london-art-festival-is-massively-expanding-this-summer-itll-take-over-a-whole-borough-041726 4-14 June 2026, 📍Hackney #hackneyartweek #savethedate #timeout

Victoria Caution (b.1980, London) explores how we exist in relation — to one another, our bodies, and the more-than-human world. For Hackney Art Week, she presents work at E5 Bakehouse — the much-loved neighbourhood sourdough bakery. Curated by the fabulous @meihuiliu8 Stay tuned for more details. 📷 Collage VI 📍 E5 Bakehouse, Hackney

For over a decade, Oleg Prokofiev concealed his abstract works in Soviet Russia—where abstraction was banned. Years later, his long-hidden paintings, sculptures, and personal ephemera resurface—intact—and are unveiled for the first time at Prokofiev Studio—a newly opened space dedicated to preserving his legacy and supporting contemporary artists, led by his son @gabrielprokofiev The inaugural exhibition “Bending Time” is curated by @anzhela.curator - now open until 29 May. @olegprokofiev.art Press enquiries @lisabaker_ltd #olegprokofiev #prokofievstudio #hackney #abstractart #newexhibition

Available now on global arts streaming platform @marqueeartstv “When David Harewood was offered the lead in Othello in a new West End production, he found he still knew his lines from almost 30 years earlier, when he became the first black actor to play the role at the National Theatre. Harewood brings profound depth to the part, alongside Toby Jones as Iago and Caitlin FitzGerald as Desdemona, in Tom Morris’s striking staging, now on Marquee TV.” - The Guardian #marqueetv #othello #davidharewood #theatre #mustseetv

‘Instant coffee with slightly sour cream (in it) and a phone call to the beyond’ Frank O’Hara, Lunch Poems, 1956 ☎️☕️ // ‘Ode to the New York noodle and other sensory delights’: @anniefrostnicholson x @tonkotsu.ramenbar for @hackneyartweek 🍜🍝🥡❤️

SPOTLIGHT ✨ ‘People of Hackney’ Pop Up Photo Booth Be part of Hackney Art Week and have YOUR portrait taken at a pop-up Photo Booth in London Fields, hosted by Portrait of Britain–winning photographer @jenny_graphic . Here’s how it works: you’ll receive a portrait to take home — and a second portrait will become part of People of Hackney, a growing series celebrating the real faces of East London. From families to muscle men, delivery drivers to ravers, bakers to artists, to Charli XCX, this project captures the people who make Hackney what it is. Selected portraits will be exhibited at next year’s Hackney Art Week. Photographer Jennifer Forward-Hayter is a Portrait of Britain winner (though we think Hackney might be her best subject yet). Families, lovers, friends, enemies, Dianne Abbott…everyone’s welcome 💚 Find it: London Fields. Weekends during Hackney Art Week (4–14 June) @jenny_graphic @love.hackney @thewiltonwaygallery @lisabaker_ltd @jenny_graphic #hackneyartweek #jennygraphic #jenniferforwardhayter #portrait #photobooth

Ode to the New York noodle 🥡🍝🍜 @anniefrostnicholson for @tonkotsu.ramenbar @hackneyartweek One in a series of four reflecting on the culinary and sensory delights of New York City: penne alla vodka from Patsy’s, with text from Frank O’Hara’s lunch poems: ‘Full of anxious pleasures and pleasurable anxiety’ More to come. 🍜🍝🥡 There will also be a talk with the brilliant @rosiefrenchfood on 6 June exploring food, painting and memory. 💖