SOMERSET.- CLOSE Gallery is presenting Rock Paper Scissors, a group exhibition running from 20 November to 20 December. Drawing inspiration from the innocence of childhood play and the universal game of the playground, the exhibition explores the elemental relationship between hand, material, and imagination. Just as the game rock, paper, scissors distils decision-making into simple gestures, the works on view embrace pared-back processes and raw materials, uncovering beauty and meaning in the handmade and the natural.

Artists in the exhibition work with elemental forms and familiar matter, stone, wood, fibre, pigment, feathers and found fragments, transforming them into new expressions of texture, balance, and touch. The title evokes a world of playfulness and tactility, reminding us of the enduring creativity sparked by simple acts and materials. By foregrounding nature and making, celebrates the imaginative leap from playground games to artistic creation, and the enduring resonance of making something from almost nothing.

The artists featured, Kate MccGwire, Hew Locke, Ted Rogers, Susanna Bauer, Alice Freeman, Anya Paintsil, Darren Appiagyei, Hana Moazzeni (Previously Shahnavaz), Nicholas Lees, Dean Coates, Peter Randall-Page, and Amy Stephens work in various forms, spanning sculpture, painting, textile, fibre art and installation. Materials emerge as metaphors associated with endurance, transience, and transformation, inviting viewers to consider how seemingly simple acts of choice and competition can reveal deeper structures of balance, vulnerability, and adaptation. Just as each move in the game both dominates and surrenders, the works in this exhibition also engage in cycles of tension and resolution, celebrating the resourcefulness of creativity and the possibility of creating something almost from nothing.


Dean Coates, Traverse I, 2024.

Among the highlights, Anya Paintsil presents two new textile pieces, made using traditional techniques such as Welsh rug hooking and embroidery, and giving new forms and life to materials like denim, leather and wool, each with their own intrinsic material histories and resonances of durability, resistance and strength. Kate MccGwire presents a series of abject sculptures, made primarily using feathers the artist collects, sorts, cleans and hones into muscular, robust looking sculptures that also play with inherent notions about surface, softness and resilience. Attasi Mines Limited (2009) from Hew Locke OBE RA features acrylic and pen on an antique certificate, drawing on themes of extraction, colonial labour and empire. Meanwhile, wood artist Darren Appiagyei, reconfigures locally sourced wood into delicate assemblages, balancing heaviness and levity with quiet precision.

CLOSE’s Somerset galleries are altered and enlivened by the dialogues between these works - a space where material and metaphor meet. The twelve artists collectively examine how materials themselves become agents of play and opposition, inviting both participation and pause, a sequence of moves, like the game that inspired the show’s premise.

Rock Paper Scissors continues CLOSE’s commitment to presenting exhibitions that foster dialogue between material experimentation and critical reflection. Founded in 2019 by Freeny Yianni, CLOSE operates as both a gallery and project space dedicated to contemporary art practices that question form, context, and community.
Introducing CLOSE Collections G Shop

Coinciding with the exhibition Rock Paper Scissors, CLOSE is delighted to announce the opening of CLOSE Collections, a new shop celebrating the playful, the practical, and the covetable. Bringing together works by gallery artists and a special curated selection of objects, CLOSE Collections offers an inspiring mix of original art, limited editions, and everyday items that reconnect us with the joy of making and the spirit of play. CLOSE Collections is designed to extend the spirit of the gallery, offering visitors the chance to take home unique works and beautifully crafted objects that continue to inspire and evoke joy beyond the gallery.


Susanna Bauer, Close (close up), 2025, ginkgo leaves, cotton thread, 30 x 30 cm (framed). Photo: Susanna Bauer).

CLOSE, founded by Freeny Yianni, is a distinctive contemporary art space rooted in the Somerset landscape, with an additional project space in Marylebone. Born from Yianni’s deep commitment to working closely with artists, CLOSE has evolved into a vibrant hub for residencies, exhibitions and education - defined by curatorial sensitivity and a spirit of collaboration. The gallery works with both living artists and artist estates, offering a unique platform for thoughtful, long-form exhibitions that encourage deeper engagement. Its rural setting fosters a slower, more reflective rhythm, serving as an intentional counterpoint to the often-frenetic pace of the wider art world.

Guided by Yianni’s extensive knowledge of contemporary art history, CLOSE forges connections between local communities and international voices, championing a broad range of artistic practices. Art at CLOSE is not confined to traditional walls; it extends into the gardens and surrounding landscape, inviting visitors to pause, reflect, and connect more deeply with the work and the environment.


Anya Paintsil, Indigestion 2025. 100 x 135cm_Acrylic, wool, fabric, found denim, leather on Panama fabric at Tŷ Pawb Art Gallery, photography courtesy of Harry Meadley

ARTIST BIOGRAPHIES

Alice Freeman (b.1991) was born in St Ives, Cornwall. Moving to London in 2008, she studied Foundation at Byam Shaw School of Art before completing a BA in Drawing and Fine Art at Camberwell College of Arts, University of the Arts London, in 2013. Shortly after graduating, Freeman received a scholarship to work on the Above and Below Ground project in Siena, Italy, alongside Mark Dion and Amy Yoes. In 2014, she moved to Bristol, where she became a member of BV Studios. In 2022, she was elected a member of the Royal Society of Sculptors. She has exhibited in the UK, Italy and the USA.

Amy Stephens (b.1981) is an artist whose practice is underpinned by geology and travel. Her work explores how we reuse, recycle and reappropriate materials from our daily environment. Using photography and collage as a starting point, her works evolve through a series of transformations leading to three-dimensional structures. Stephens’ sculptures often employ industrial processes such as bronze casting and wood planning to create minimal, architectural forms that celebrate artefacts in a considered way, prompting reflection on time and our relationship with the landscape. Her fragile geometric shapes blur the boundary between drawing and sculpture, combining precision with sensitivity.

Anya Paintsil (b.1993) is a Welsh and Ghanaian textile artist who lives and works between London and Glyn Ceiriog. Drawing inspiration from her childhood in North Wales and the Fante tradition of figurative textiles, Paintsil combines craft practices she learnt as a child - rug-making, appliqué and hand embroidery - with Afro hairstyling techniques to create large-scale, expressive portraits.

Her work explores the possibilities and politics of non-representative depictions of the Black figure. Deliberately positioned outside the European fine art canon, Paintsil’s practice draws on traditional West African crafts and art forms such as wood sculpture and mask-making, translating their formal qualities into textile-based work. Through these material choices she interrogates gendered labour, particularly that of working- class women.

Paintsil made her debut at 1–54 Contemporary African Art Fair, London (2020), and has since gained significant recognition from collectors and institutions. Her work is held in public collections including the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; the National Museum of Wales; the Whitworth Gallery, Manchester; and The Women’s Art Collection, Cambridge.

Darren Appiagyei (b.1993) is a London-based wood artist, curator and public speaker whose practice embraces the imperfections of wood. His work highlights the natural textures, tones and details of each piece, revealing its hidden potential. Appiagyei discovered woodturning during his 3D Design degree at the University of the Arts London (2016) and has since established a distinctive practice at Cockpit Arts, where he received the Turners Award (2017).

Appiagyei is best known for his Banksia Nut series, which demonstrates his fascination with the organic form and surface of the material. Sustainability plays a central role in his practice: he works exclusively with locally sourced woods, often collecting materials via public transport. His work reflects a deep respect for both craftsmanship and the environment.

Dean Coates (b.1968) is a British ceramic artist whose practice explores the intersections of ceramics with sculpture, painting and drawing. He constructs ceramic ‘canvases’ from slabs or larger hand-coiled stoneware forms that become substrates for layers of sprayed, brushed and slip-trailed reactive glazes and materials developed over the past decade. Through the alchemical processes of firing, transformation and interaction, the works evolve into surfaces of unpredictable texture and colour, their metamorphic changes echoing the geological forces that inspire them.

Coates views his finished pieces as metaphorical paintings and drawings that reflect on geology and transformation in nature. He holds a BSc in Geology and an MA in Ceramics from Cardiff Metropolitan University, and lives and works in Bristol, UK.
Hana Moazzeni is a British Iranian visual artist best known for her exquisitely drawn work exploring the deep connection between the feminine and the natural world. Her practice centres on the healing and transformative power of this relationship with the Earth, celebrating women as healers, storytellers and guardians of the land. Viewing the Earth as the Divine Feminine, Moazzeni’s work is rooted in earth-based spirituality informed by ancient wisdom channelled through plants, animals and celestial bodies.

Her Iranian heritage informs both her visual language and her storytelling. Drawing from Persian miniature painting, mythology and poetry, she merges intricate detail with contemporary symbolism to weave new narratives of healing and transformation.
Horses recur throughout her work as emblems of freedom, power and spiritual connection. Moazzeni works with a range of materials including oil, pastel, crayon and handmade paints from earth pigments, minerals and plants. Her handmade papers, created in collaboration with an Iranian papermaker, combine mulberry, silk, rice and hemp, recalling ancient manuscripts.

Moazzeni studied traditional Persian music and painting for six years in Iran before receiving the Albukhary Scholarship to study for an MA in Traditional Arts at The Prince’s School of Traditional Arts, London, graduating with distinction (2017) and receiving the Ciclitira Prize for outstanding work. Her works are represented in numerous international collections. She lives and works in London.

Hew Locke OBE RA (b. 1959) is a London-based artist whose work explores power, identity, and history through richly layered sculptural forms that draw on iconography from royal portraiture, military regalia, public statuary and the architecture of empire. His practice frequently reconfigures these symbols to question colonial legacies and narratives of national identity.

His work is held in major international collections including Tate, London; The Government Art Collection, London; The Arts Council Collection, London; The Victoria and Albert Museum, London; The Imperial War Museum, London; The British Museum, London; The Henry Moore Institute, Leeds; The National Trust; The New Art Gallery Walsall; Pérez Art Museum, Miami; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; The Brooklyn Museum, New York; and 21c Museum Hotels, USA.

Kate MccGwire (b.1964) is a British artist who lives and works in London. Raised on the Norfolk Broads, her early experiences of this distinctive landscape - its wetlands, waterways and wildlife - form the foundation of her practice. Working primarily with feathers, she creates intricate, muscular forms that appear both organic and otherworldly. Her sculptures evoke the dualities of nature: seductive yet repellent, fluid yet static, beautiful yet abject.

Through laborious processes of collecting, sorting and cleaning her materials, MccGwire transforms feathers - symbols of flight and freedom but also of fragility - into dense, undulating structures that explore cycles, patterns and paradoxes found in the natural world.

Nicholas Lees (b.1967) is a British ceramic artist whose work has been exhibited widely in the UK and internationally. His delicate, meticulously refined vessels and sculptural forms explore light, shadow and the perception of volume through fine gradations of porcelain and glaze. Lees’ work is held in major collections including York City Art Gallery, the Westerwald Keramikmuseum (Germany) and the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.

He has received numerous awards including the Cersaie Prize at the Premio Faenza (Italy, 2015), the National Sculpture Award at the Bluecoat Display Centre (2010) and the Desmond Preston Prize for Excellence in Drawing at the Royal College of Art (2012). Lees teaches on postgraduate courses at the Royal College of Art, UCA Farnham and Bath Spa University. He works from his studio in Selborne, Hampshire.

Peter Randall-Page (b.1954) is a British artist whose work investigates the deep connections between sculpture, drawing, and the natural world. Trained in fine art but deeply informed by an enduring fascination with organic growth and natural patterning, his practice bridges art and science through material exploration and form. Working primarily with stone, clay, and bronze, Randall-Page translates natural geometries - such as cellular structures, seeds, and rock formations - into tactile, contemplative sculptures that evoke the processes of evolution and transformation found in nature.

He approaches his finished works as meditations on structure and metamorphosis, revealing the underlying order that connects all living things. His artistic language reflects an enduring dialogue between intuition and analysis, art and the natural sciences. Randall-Page lives and works in Devon, UK.

Susanna Bauer (b.1969) works with natural leaves and crochet, creating an intimate dialogue with nature. Found leaves are repaired, embellished and combined using handmade lace crochet - a laborious, traditional technique reliant on precision and tension, set in direct relationship to the fragile material. Her delicate works meditate on the beauty and intricacy of the natural world and reflect the tenderness and tension inherent in human connections.

Working on an unusually detailed scale with fine cotton threads, Bauer pushes crochet to its limits, merging craft and sculpture. By combining this delicate technique with fragile organic matter, she explores themes of time, care, resilience and transience, revealing the ephemeral yet enduring beauty of nature.

Ted Rogers is a multidisciplinary artist based in Margate. Their expansive practice, rooted in movement, encompasses film, ceramics, installation and the performative act of drawing. Rogers’ work explores emotional extremity through stripped-back, high- camp performativity, using rhythm, pacing and gesture to interrogate queerness and identity.

As an autistic artist, Rogers constructs characters as sanctuaries - parodic and poignant figures navigating human interaction with vulnerability and humour. Their practice is both devotional and embodied: dancing ballets, writing lyrics and poems, drawing draped figures and sacred spaces, and engaging deeply with nature and ritual. Rogers’ work ultimately seeks connection and witness, oscillating between solitude and collaboration, discipline and chaos. They live and work in Margate.