About PM/AM
PM/AM is a contemporary art gallery located on the border of Soho and Fitzorovia in the heart of London. It hosts a busy programme of shows across the two exhibition floors of the Eastcastle Street space. The gallery’s lower ground floor studio provides the location for a residency space for international and under-represented artists to develop their practice. Together the spaces form a unique cultural and creative hub in the bustling centre of the city.
PM/AM’s mission is to reflect through art how we engage with ourselves and the world today, expressed through the artists it is fortunate enough to work with. Recent graduates, those emerging into the spotlight and in their mid-careers on the international stage all feature across a dynamic programme. The gallery works on the vanguard of the emerging art sector, responsible for finding artists of tomorrow, and is keen to explore and present work originating from the many interlocking diasporas of the world. PM/AM’s plays a part in the incubation of contemporary art’s future by representing a carefully selected roster of artists, working with them to initiate and grow lasting careers in the global art world.
As a dynamic arts organisation PM/AM’s activities extend beyond exhibitions into consultation, publications and editorial, providing the means to facilitate placements with collectors and institutions, and create extended content to further support and expose the artists we work with. This self-contained structure is key to the gallery’s broad outlook and capabilities, however we value collaborations with external writers, curators and other galleries to realise our goals.
Exhibition Text
In Chidinma Nnoli's new body of work, 'Pieces of My Peace of Mind', she invites the viewer into a dense web of questions concerning the physical and spiritual body in the context of place and space, in our societies, the gendered frameworks through which we drift, our obligations to each other and to ourselves. Her subjects are cradled by external environments that possess their own sentience, connected together in a mysterious harmony, an unidentifiable language.
Sticking within a fairly narrow palette of natural tones and muted pastels, the absence of significant contrast between human figure and the exterior world holds up high the idea that the boundary between the two is porous and traversable. We can assume with ease that this dissolving structure also creates passage from subject to space, space to spirit, spirit to history.
This conceptual richness has roots in Chidinma's cross-discipline creative mind, which steps away from painting and into poetry. Her poems could be seen as memories that are made visual on the canvas, kept suspended between fantasy and the containment of physical existence by the haze of a dream half-remembered.
Recognising the duality of the body and the ethereal self is important to Chidinma, who explores the role of both as emotional entities with parallel lived experiences. In response to trauma and healing, subjects explored in a recent body of work, the mind and body collaborate to express stress, anxiety and relief. We can see sensations like these symbolised in paintings that are at once tense, but with the potential for emancipation from our ills.
Chidinma’s focus on women emerged early on in her painting career. Her depictions of femininity stem from her personal experiences, growing up around conservative, oppressive views fraught with gendered stereotypes and expectations. Exposing the hostility of these toxic notions, rooted in religion and misogyny, the paintings play an important role in highlighting and disarming those who seek to suppress the fullness of female freedom of expression.
The wider effect of spending time with Chidinma's work is one of comfort, that the suppressed among us are being watched over; that the lonely can find comfort in universal forces that, though not always easy to detect, are always there. Yes there is a darkness, a deep ache; there is also, however, a reminder of our shared experience, and how the message - however unidentifiable the language - of comfort and hope, is one that can be felt by us all.
- Daniel Mackenzie, June 2023
CV
Chidinma Nnoli
Born: 1998, Enugu, Nigeria.
Lives and works in Lagos.
Education
2018 - BA Fine and Applied Arts. University of Benin.
Solo Exhibitions
2022 - Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York City.
2021 - The Armory, New York City.
2021 - Rele Gallery, Lagos.
Selected Group Exhibitions
2023 - Seattle Art Museum, Seattle.
2023 - Blum & Poe, Los Angeles.
2023 - Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery, Berlin.
2023 - PM/AM, London.
2021 - Rele Gallery, Lagos.
2021 - Yemisi Shyllon Museum, Lagos.
2021 - Rele Gallery, Los Angeles.
2021 - Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York City.
2020 - Rele Gallery, Lagos.
2019 - Thoughts Pyramid Art Center, Lagos.
2019 - Idesign Art Fair, Lagos.
2018 - Fontini Cristi Art Gallery, Edo.
2018 - Crowne Art Gallery, Edo.
Residency
2023 - Atlantic Center for the Arts, Florida.
2023 - Ox-Bow Summer Artist-in-Residence Program, Michigan.
2023 - PM/AM Residency, London.
2019 - Rele Art Foundation Residency, Ekiti.
2017 - Universal Studios of Art, National Theatre, Lagos.
