The Art Unit Presents Genesis: An Exhibition of New Beginnings
The Art Unit is proud to present Genesis, a group exhibition bringing together five compelling female artists whose diverse practices explore the theme of new beginnings. Working across painting, drawing and printmaking, the artists each approach the notion of origin - whether personal, political, mythological or spiritual - from distinct yet resonant perspectives. The exhibition unfolds as a meditation on transformation: the quiet emergence of hope, the cyclical rhythms of nature, and the vulnerability inherent in starting anew.
In Genesis, new beginnings are not depicted as singular events, but as processes - river journeys, fractured forms made whole, reimagined identities and the restorative act of sleep. The works featured speak to renewal as both an intimate and universal experience. Together, the exhibition offers a powerful dialogue on resilience, femininity and the alchemy of creation.
Ruby Bateman
Working from her home studio in the South West countryside, Ruby creates paintings and drawings steeped in a richly colourful and symbolic visual language. Interweaving esoteric, Classical and Gothic motifs with ancestral origin stories and mythology, her practice extends into fiction writing and the use of homemade, eco-conscious materials. For Genesis, Ruby presents a mini-series charting birth and conception as a river journey - beginning at the source, flowing into a river, and culminating at the mouth. Painted entirely with locally foraged tree inks, the works embody an alchemical process through which Ruby explores love and loss, maternal politics, grief held in the body, the transformational power of plant medicine and the ego’s shifting relationship with nature.
Beatrice Hasell-McCosh
Beatrice Hasell-McCosh uses natural form as a lens to explore emotional themes, identity and human connection. Rooted in close observational drawing, her large-scale paintings evolve in the studio through memory, abstraction and an intuitive play with scale. Central to her current series is the idea of works presented in parts - a concept influenced by her discovery of kintsugi in Japan in 2018, embracing beauty in imperfection and fragmentation. Often working in diptychs and triptychs with deliberately uneven elements, Beatrice reflects on multiplicity and wholeness, a sensibility perhaps informed by her experience as a twin. Her influences range widely - from literature and politics to pop culture, music, Disney set design, comic strips, 1950s advertising, Chagall’s stained glass and the traditions of tapestry and wallpaper - creating layered compositions where colour, texture and gesture take precedence over direct representation.
Olga Karika
Ukrainian artist Olga Karika interrogates double standards and misinterpretations, encouraging viewers to enter into dialogue with their inner selves. Inspired by notions of “eternal beauty” - a concept both steadfast and concealing - her new linocut series reflects on hope, renewal and the cyclical nature of life. Each work is hand-carved into linoleum and individually printed, resulting in subtle variations that render every piece unique. Through this meticulous, tactile process, Olga underscores the idea that new beginnings are shaped by repetition and resilience, and that beauty often reveals itself gradually through reflection.
Rebecca Sammon
Rebecca Sammon is a British artist living and working in London. Educated at the University of Brighton, Kansas City Art Institute and The Royal Drawing School, her bold and poetic works pulse with vibrant immediacy. Rebecca’s paintings frequently draw on abstracted elements of nature interacting with human forms in imagined landscapes, shifting between mythical suggestion and ambiguous dreamscapes. In Genesis, her fluid figures and daring colour combinations evoke altered states - worlds poised between reality and reverie - where transformation becomes both narrative and atmosphere. Her works are held in private collections globally and have been exhibited widely, including recent presentations in London galleries and the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition.
Oleksandra Martson
Born in Ukraine in 1984 and is now based in London, figurative painter Oleksandra Martson works primarily in oil on canvas, distinguished by clean, dramatic compositions and refined graphic detail. Her ongoing Sleeping series, featured in Genesis, emerged from sleepless nights in Kyiv during air-raid alarms, when exhaustion rendered sleep both fragile and profoundly necessary. In these works, sleep becomes a metaphor for sanctuary and inner equilibrium - a deeply human longing for peace amid uncertainty. Her practice has been recognised through inclusion in the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition and multiple long-listings for the Herbert Smith Freehills Portrait Award at the National Portrait Gallery.
Genesis invites audiences to consider beginnings not as fixed points, but as living, breathing states of becoming—fragile yet powerful, intimate yet collective.
Join us at the private viewing of Genesis on March 5th from 18:00 until 20:00.
The exhibition will be open until March 15th.
