Aleph Contemporary

Mary Ann Prior is an established figure in the art world, primarily working as an Art Advisor and Curator. Her practice is noted for its thoughtful approach to contemporary painting, often focusing on works that delve into themes of nature, memory, and spiritual experience.

For Aleph Contemporary, Mary Ann Prior curated the exhibition Susannah Fiennes, Eugenie Vronskaya, Lucie Winterson: Glimpsing the Indefinable, which ran from June 7 to September 10, 2022, at The Bindery in Hatton Garden. The exhibition text itself was written by Prior, providing a direct insight into her curatorial vision.

Glimpsing the Indefinable Curatorial Text (Introductory Summary)

The exhibition brought together three distinguished women painters who had never exhibited together before, all of whom share a profound connection to Nature as a necessary place of solitude and creative refuge. Prior's curatorial premise centers on the idea that these artists—who divide their lives between the city (London) and the country (Wales/Oxford, Scotland, and Devon)—require the peace and rigour of rural environments to produce works of intense mystery and commitment.

The theme of the exhibition, as established by Prior, is the attempt to capture something ineffable or "indefinable" on canvas, echoing the quote: "One can only get to Heaven alone." Prior highlights the shared qualities of intensity and mystery in the artists' output, despite differences in style:

• Lucie Winterson's work is deeply concerned with ecology and reconfiguring humanity's link to the vegetal world, using overlapping layers, textures, and photography to connect layers of being with layers of memory.

• Eugenie Vronskaya creates ambiguous, otherworldly locations that often feature translucent, dreamlike figures in mutable settings, reflecting a sense of isolation and the "time out of time" experience of the artist in the studio.

• Susannah Fiennes is more focused on the geometry of structures and gestures, where highly-stylised figures and forms create powerful, elusive narratives, showing how feeling emerges through underlying geometric preoccupations.

Mary Ann Prior connects all three artists through their layered, process-driven practices—whether literally (Winterson), symbolically (Vronskaya), or inconspicuously (Fiennes)—and their shared belief in the importance of letting "the unconscious speak." In curating this show, Prior underscored the necessary solitude and devotional nature of painting as a journey to distill the past and present into a moment of pure, crystalline expression.