Ephemeral Tensions – Exhibition Review

Galleria Objets continues to carve out space for exhibitions that foreground experimentation and cross-disciplinary practice, and Ephemeral Tensions sits firmly within that ethos. 

The title itself offers a useful point of entry: a tension that appears across the works, the atmosphere, and the curatorial decisions. A current that resists over-articulation and instead asks the viewer to tune into its frequency.

In this context, curators Grazia Mori and Gabriel Myserscough locate that tension in the electricity that moves, both metaphorically and materially, the hand of the artist. 

Co-Curator, Grazia Mori explains;

In Ephemeral Tensions, the concept actually emerges from a playful metaphor. The spark came from a drawing by George Meadows, depicting a dog rendered with a vibrant, almost trembling line. I felt as if the artist had received a small jolt while drawing. From there came the association with current and tension. 

Her reflection points to the playful interplay between an almost supernatural charge and the tangible, heralded by the results of artistic labour. This oscillation opens space for the unexpected to slip in, where whimsy shifts certainty just enough to open new interpretive pathways.

Mori reinforces this approach as she notes, 

The playful dimension in art for example, is fundamental for me, both in my curatorial work and in my own artistic practice. Irony keeps the exhibition from closing in on a micro-theme and allows it to remain capable of unexpected deviations. 

Fellow Co-Curator, Gabriel Mysercough notes; 

Some things were subconsciously or consciously informed by this threshold idea: the empty wall on the right of the main room, the dim lighting at the opening view, the contrast with the more “electric” pieces.

These decisions create a rhythm where intensity and lightness sit adjacent. Some works lean into ephemerality – hovering forms, fragile materials, surfaces that shift with the angle of your eye. Others introduce tension more directly through weight, scale, colour, or emotional charge. Many hold both at once.

For the curators, this middle ground between lightness and force had to be finely calibrated; 

Mori expands; 

I believe the connection should not be too explicit, as making it too evident would limit the evocative potential and the immersive experience of each individual piece. 

The artworks are therefore placed in dialogue not only through affinities but also through contrast, finding the meeting point between two seemingly contrasting things creates a sense of balance. 

One of the strongest curatorial ideas is the sense of the gallery functioning like a circuit. Works gather charge, release it, or interrupt it. This becomes physical in the movement between the two rooms.

The first space holds smaller, self-contained works, such as Riccardo Sala’s Hunting Trophy, a compact painted wooden object, or Rebecca Willing’s Burial, where pencil, oil, and glitter settle into an intimate piece. Viewers at the opening drifted around this room slowly, pointing out details, comparing textures, warming up to the exhibition’s register.

Passing through the garden between the rooms works as a natural reset. The conversations outside – casual, scattered, lively – felt like part of the pacing. The main room raises the voltage; you step into a different charge. Sam Nicholson’s Right On Time stretches wide across its surface, the colours bold and vibrant, almost moving rather than sitting still. George Meadows’ Rocking Pig has a bizarre, weighty playfulness that shifts the room’s tone.

Myerscough notes;

Certain works act like conductors and others like nodes. You move through quieter pieces that buzz into brighter ones, broken up by pauses in the circuit. The empty wall became a kind of circuit breaker.

Myerscough reflects on how the installation came together through an intentionally intuitive process;

We would place artworks, stare at them for five minutes, move them, repeat… balancing the concept with what works visually is the nail you need to hit. Seeing them in person gives you a better sense of how to tie it all together.

This slow-looking approach carries through to the viewer. The exhibition rewards attention. The more time spent sitting with a work, the more the show’s tone clarifies. It feels lived-in; the works communicate without collapsing into a single aesthetic.Myerscough’s own piece, Granary Square, sits within this system. A warped concrete engraving that behaves like a small building slightly out of sync with itself, it captures the show’s interest in forms that resist settling.

The idea of electricity here is metaphorical, something felt rather than shown. The virtual becomes a potential – a warping of the physical that shouldn’t exist but does.

Like Myerscough, Mori’s own work is a welcomed feature in this exhibition. However, we find the “electricity” running through her own work in a very different way; 

There was a moment of concentration and inwardness that only painting could give me, a dialogue with the image, its decoding and construction.  

Burning through her work is the spark powered by the contemplative engine; painting as a site of sustained encounter, where the image is not merely produced but conversed with. The “concentration and inwardness” she describes resonates strongly with the show’s broader themes of tension; her process suggests a kind of slow-burning electricity that shapes each gesture on the canvas.

Mori finds comfort in the familiarity of the human face and subverts its traditional semblance to converse with the character. 

This path, unfolding between the memorisation of his image and its gradual dissolution,  aims to transcend the representation of an individual and instead seek its allegory.  

Ephemeral Tensions succeeds by trusting sensation over explanation. Empty walls as punctuation, contrast as structure, intuition running the show – the curators’ approach fits the gallery’s interest in keeping conversations open. And there were plenty. The opening night was full of people comparing what they felt, spotting different charges in the room, building the exhibition together in real time. 

This sense of conduction, of invisible forces conversing through materials, concepts, and spatial relationships, makes the exhibition not only coherent but quietly, compellingly alive. The result is a show that’s easy to enter, hard to speed through, and ultimately rewarding for viewers willing to slow down.