“This body of work comes from a place of risk and continual revision. Painting feels easier now, not because it’s resolved, but because I’m more willing to let go of control. I’m interested in how painting holds the body - how it changes, resists, and carries memory over time. The process depends on being both in control and out of control. It comes from repetition, and from a mental and physical agility: staying limber, warm, and ready for anything.”
Hannah Payne Art is delighted to announce extended dates for Spectral Interference, a major solo exhibition by London-based painter Anna Liber Lewis at Saatchi Gallery, London.
Following a highly successful first presentation, the exhibition will reopen from 21 May – 13 June 2026, with a refreshed rehang introducing a number of new works and an expanded presentation of the series.
New additions will include a major new large-scale painting, ANNA (2026), measuring 230 x 160 cm, in which Liber Lewis conceals her own name within layered passages of paint — continuing her exploration of memory, structure, concealment and gesture.
Bringing together a body of work that marks a rupture from her earlier grid-based paintings, Spectral Interference embraces abstraction as a site of risk, embodiment and perceptual instability.
Across 28 paintings of varying scale, Liber Lewis leaves behind the grid and their line work. Structure is still present, not as a fixed system, but as a generative structure - that can be disrupted, softened, or pushed to breaking point. The new paintings have evolved through cycles of editing and return: surfaces are worked into, scraped back, reactivated, and at times deliberately destabilised. Old works are revisited and altered, reflecting a willingness to give up control in pursuit of something more alive.
Central to this new body of work is an interest in high-stakes painting - the ongoing tension between abstraction and figuration, structure and the body, control, and risk. Influenced by disparate artists such as Helen Frankenthaler and Carroll Dunham, Liber Lewis approaches abstraction as a physical, confronting act, where the mark carries memory, effort, and jeopardy. Gesture operates not as expressive excess but as a record of decision-making, endurance, and doubt.
Spectral Interference at Saatchi Gallery brings together a significant group of new and recent works, including paintings such as Embodied Other, My GRB Afterglow, and Very Rare Picture of Earth II, alongside a number of large-scale canvases shown publicly for the first time. Presented at a pivotal moment in Liber Lewis’ career, this exhibition represents her most ambitious institutional presentation to date, following her recent inclusion in the group exhibition Unreal City: Abstract Painting in London at Saatchi Gallery (2024).
For more information: saatchigallery.com/whats-on
Gallery 1, Saatchi Gallery, Duke of York's HQ, King's Rd, London SW3 4RY
Exhibition continues to 6 May 2026. Free entry.
Enquiries: info@hannahpayneart.co.uk
Downloads:
1. Exhibition text by Christine Murray, Editor, Writer, Critic
2. Press Release
3. List of works available
