Pamela Bryan of Octavia Art Gallery and London curator Julia Campbell Carter unite five international artists in a cross-cultural exhibition of memory, movement and resilience.
Founder of Octavia Art Gallery, New Orleans, Pamela Bryan, and London-based curator and art advisor Julia Campbell Carter present Rhythm in the Blues, a contemporary group exhibition at 14 Percy Street, London, running from 11 to 20 May. Bringing together Alia Ali, Aigana Gali, Azadeh Ghotbi, Naomie Kremer and Lucille Lewin, the exhibition traces the pulse of rhythm, migration, memory and place through five distinct international voices.
Rooted in the cultural charge of New Orleans and staged in London, Rhythm in the Blues treats music not as subject matter, but as atmosphere, structure and inheritance. Across painting, sculpture and mixed-media practice, the artists explore how identity travels: through colour, gesture, repetition, fracture and form. At a moment marked by geopolitical uncertainty and cultural division, Bryan and Campbell Carter offer an exhibition tuned to connection, resilience and the enduring power of art to speak across borders.
© Julia Campbell Carter
Why does this show feel significant right now?
Julia Campbell Carter Curator and Art Advisor: In the current global climate, through our show Rhythm in the Blues, we want to offer our visitors a necessary counterpoint. Bringing together five artists from different backgrounds, the exhibition draws on themes of resilience and cultural memory to create a powerful collective statement: that art remains a shared language when tension is so high elsewhere in the world.
What made you choose the artists included in the show?
Julia Campbell Carter Curator and Art Advisor: For this collaboration, I brought Lucille Lewin, Azadeh Ghotbi and Aigana Gali: three artists I had chosen for their distinct voices and storytelling. Lewin’s deconstructed porcelain sculptures, Ghotbi’s gestural canvases, rooted in her sensitive and observant nature, and Gali’s luminous paintings, drawn from ancient Eurasian cosmologies, are all, in different ways, unique explorations of identity and memory. These are the very themes that lie at the heart of Rhythm in the Blues.
As a UK curator and advisor working with an American gallery, how did the idea for this exhibition first come about?
Julia Campbell Carter Curator and Art Advisor: After meeting Pamela, we spoke about New Orleans, with its rich cultural heritage, and decided we wanted to create a show that honoured the city’s roots in blues and rhythm, while giving the artists the freedom to interpret that theme through their own personal experience. What came from this was five distinct voices, each drawing on their own identity.
What do you want visitors to take away from this exhibition?
Julia Campbell Carter Curator and Art Advisor: My hope is that visitors leave feeling that the world is more connected than it can often seem right now. Each of our five artists has taken their own cultural identity and lived experience and transformed it into something universal. Art has always had the power to transcend borders and, in a moment of such global uncertainty, this exhibition feels like a reminder of that.
Founder of Octavia Art Gallery © Pamela Bryan Founder
As a gallerist from New Orleans, a city with such a rich musical history, how did the heritage of this city inform the making of this show?
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Pamela Bryan Founder, Octavia Art Gallery: New Orleans heritage and its musical history have deeply shaped this exhibition. Similar to the musical heritage of New Orleans, Rhythm in the Blues brings together multiple histories, identities and perspectives, which all feel interconnected. New Orleans is the birthplace of jazz, a music phenomenon that London embraces. The British come to New Orleans to listen to our live music, which is vibrant and exhilarating. So, we wanted to bring a little New Orleans to London.
What do you want visitors to take away from this exhibition?
Pamela Bryan Founder, Octavia Art Gallery: My hope is that visitors will experience a sense of emotional, cultural and intellectual connection to the work. The featured artists come from vastly different backgrounds, although their works share common themes of rhythm, movement, colour and a universal connectedness through a visual language. I want visitors to understand that art is an international love language. We in the US respect and admire our UK counterparts.
You partnered with a UK advisor to stage this show. Why is transnational collaboration so important for art-world dialogues at the moment?
Pamela Bryan Founder, Octavia Art Gallery: With the insistence of globalisation, I am focused on delivering a platform for authentic cultures and voices. Artists and ideas are constantly moving across cultures and geographies, and curatorial dialogue should reflect that reality. Working between New Orleans and London brought unique perspectives to the conversation. These kinds of collaborations cultivate exchange and cross-cultural understanding, which is essential for our current art-world dialogues. Keeping these cultures alive allows people to display diversity and thereby enrich our lives.
Contributing writer at Art Plugged chronicling contemporary art’s beautiful mess, when he can get there. Now edging behind the camera, making insightful documentaries about artists and the work that haunts them. Survives on openings, opinions, one gallery, one artwork at a time. Considers espresso a meal.
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