LONDON.- Courtney Love has joined the incredible line-up for Art on a Postcard’s April auction with curator and gallerist India Rose James. Love will feature alongside artists including Joe Lycett, Alma Berrow, Danny Fox, Olivia Sterling, Nettle Grellier and Layla Andrews, who have created unique postcard sized masterpieces. A selection of thirty handmade postcards by leading rising talents will be auctioned with bidding starting at just £50. All proceeds will go to CHOOSE LOVE in support of their Ukrainian appeal.

“We are so pleased to have Courtney Love, the music icon, contribute to this auction with her striking and emotive style.” - India Rose James

Art on a Postcard was founded by Gemma Peppé and The Hepatitis C Trust with the aim of championing the power of art to do good for marginalised, oppressed, and at-risk individuals. Their auctions are usually in aid of The Trust’s work to eradicate Hep C, however for this edition Gemma Peppé and India Rose James have chosen to deviate from this tradition considering the urgent situation in Ukraine.

Gemma Peppé comments, “We have decided to donate the funds from our auction with India Rose James to Choose Love in support of Ukrainian citizens enduring this terrible time. My mother was in arrested in Livi in 1939 at a very young age and spent her formative years in a Russian gulag. As a result, the awful situation in Ukraine touched me on a personal level and I feel compelled to do something."

India Rose James adds, “I’ve been a big supporter of the Choose Love cause for years now. What's more, the team share my passion for supporting emerging artists through their platform; they are a dream to work with and I feel very lucky be supporting their cause for a second time this year through art, particularly when their work is so vitally important right now.”

Having founded her gallery Soho Revue in 2019, India Rose James has an incomparable knowledge of the most noteworthy emerging voices in the London art scene. She platforms exceptional new talent through her diverse exhibition program. Alongside this, she has worked with CHOOSE LOVE on several occasions and continues this essential philanthropic work through her partnership with Art on a Postcard.

Highlight Artists

Alma Berrow

Ceramist Alma Berrow, favourite of high-brow collectors and Instagram influencers alike, has developed a significant following for her joyful pieces which capture the spirit of a riotous dinner party the night before. Oyster shells containing cigarette butts and receipts with scrawled love notes are commonplace in her delightful porcelain creations.

Olivia Sterling

Championed by Guts Gallery, Olivia Sterling has very quickly carved out a name for herself as one of the most exciting young creators to know. Just a year after graduating, she hosted a solo show at Goldsmiths CCA. Her vibrant works address questions of blackness and whiteness in contemporary Britain through an innovative approach to painting. Using an almost slapstick humour and a distinctively deliberate aura of chaos, she creates a space to explore racial relations as they manifest in everyday interactions. The quotidian and the mundane are monumentalised and satirically addressed, shining a light on the potential microaggressions that may be present in any situation. In particular, she often focuses on instances where food is a key focus. Something as simple as a picnic between friends becomes a site of examination and a realm for change.

Danny Fox

Stradling the realm between outsider artist and certifiable art world favourite, Danny Fox recently returned to Cornwall from Los Angeles and marked his repatriation with a hugely successful show at Saatchi Yates. The exhibition Brown Willy featured works revolving around the British coast and the infamous occultist Aleister Crowley. His paintings are charmingly folkish and playful in style, yet webs of reference and research are masked within. His diverse subjects include tragedy, promise, heat, violence, and sex, enclaved within unlikely portraits and wild, wonderful scenes of rural Britain. He was also very influenced by his time in the USA and his experience of American culture, which is perhaps imbued here in this painting of a cowboy.

Layla Andrews

Brixton based painter Layla Andrews is known for her pieces exploring food and fun-loving portraits of crocodile headed figures. Her works are collected globally and have caught the attention of many, including previous president Barak Obama who encouraged her to further her art career and praised her painting. She is currently undertaking a residency at Brixton Village and is represented by multiple galleries in the UK and abroad.

Nettle Grellier

Nettle Grellier explores intimacy and touch in her work through close observation of bodily presence. She often uses beautiful and soft colours, tones of pink and red with earthy browns and greens, to evoke moments of weary relaxation. Bringing together figures and natural landscapes, her characters embrace and entwine in unlikely ways within oddly turbulent natural environments. Her works for the auction explore oral touch, an unusual site of exploration for sure!

A bit of a nomad, she has often lived and worked from a van travelling through Europe and recently settled in the UK after completing the Turps Banana Correspondence Course in 2020. She hosted a very successful solo show, Come to Good at Delphian Gallery, London in October 2021 and has previously exhibited with India Rose James at Soho Revue.

The auction also includes works by Oriele Steiner, Henry Hudson, Richie Culver, Elaine Speirs, Polly Edsell, Beatrice Hassell-McCosh, Nettie Wakefield, Ming Ying, Nana Wolke, Harriet Gillett, Kristy M Chan and Amy Steel.