Artist highlight
Artist highlight
Top 5 Artists | Virginia Damtsa
Wen Wu, The Veil, 2016, oil on linen, 30 x 25cm. Image courtesy of the artist.
A spotlight on the Top 5 Artists to watch. This week's Top 5 comes from gallerist, curator, and cultural strategist Virginia Damtsa.
Image courtesy of Virginia Damtsa.
Virginia Damtsa
This week’s top 5 artists comes from gallerist, curator, and cultural strategist Virginia Damtsa. Virginia is the Director of Visual Arts at Town Hall, the founder of Riflemaker Gallery (2003–2018), and has collaborated with Peter Gabriel on projects bridging art and music.
Virginia curates approximately ten exhibitions a year, presenting a dynamic programme of exhibitions and events in London and internationally. These include The Body Thinks in Colour by Wen Wu at Paul Smith, Westbourne House, alongside Her Stories Untold at Town Hall, in partnership with Annie Lennox’s charity The Circle. Through this consistently active programme, Virginia continues to champion contemporary voices across art and culture with unstoppable energy.
Wen Wu
Wen Wu (b.1978) is a Chinese artist based in London. Born in Qingdao in 1978, she studied at Tsinghua University under the renowned Chen Dan Qing, one of China’s most influential art educators. A devoted bibliophile, she draws from literature - curating titles from Nabokov to Sade - infusing her work with narrative and symbolism. Wu has forged a distinct path, grounded in a refined, neo-realist style that bridges East and West. Inspired by 19th-century French plein air romanticism, literature, the English Pre-Raphaelites, and the School of Paris, her work is rich with shadow, colour, and nuance. Though deeply figurative, her paintings possess an almost sacred abstraction.
"What draws me to Wen Wu's work is its quiet strength. Her portraits possess a remarkable emotional depth and are very poetic. There is a sense of vulnerability and resilience existing simultaneously, creating works that linger long after you have left them. The emotional impact is subtle yet profound."
Wen Wu, Downward Regeneration, 2026, oil on canvas, 60 x 50cm. Image courtesy of the artist.
Von Wolfe
Von Wolfe (b.1966) is a British artist of Polish and German descent. Working with oil paint, Von Wolfe renders figures in spaces suspended between reality and the surreal to examine themes of identity, intimacy, and psychological depth. His practice is at the forefront of technological innovation, blending traditional oil painting with diffusion models, navigating the boundary between digital and tactile realms.
"What I find compelling in Von Wolfe’s work is the way he bridges the old and the new with such confidence. There is a clear dialogue with art history yet the works remain distinctly contemporary in their execution and psychological charge. This tension between tradition and modern sensibility gives the paintings their intensity. They feel both familiar and unsettled, suspended between historical reference and present-day narrative."
Von Wolfe, The Dollhouse and the Dusk, 2025, oil on canvas, 180 x 180cm. Image courtesy of the artist.
Sumakshi Singh
Sumakshi Singh (b.1980) is a Gurugram-based artist, curator, writer, and educator. Rooted in the processes of drawing and embroidery, Singh’s interactive installations draw on the thresholds of human experience to explore themes of materiality and temporality in ephemeral spaces. Her installation Permanent Address constructs a spectral Delhi bungalow made of thread and lace, and is featured in the India Pavilion at the 2026 Venice Biennale.
"Sumakshi Singh's work captivates me through its delicacy. There is an extraordinary beauty in the fragility of her practice, where intricate details and ethereal forms evoke themes of memory, absence, and impermanence. The works feel simultaneously vulnerable and resilient, inviting moments of quiet contemplation."
Sumakshi Singh, Permanent Address, 2026, silk, cotton, and nylon threads stretched on steel frames. Image courtesy: Joe habben.
Annette Messager
Annette Messager (b.1943) creates work that has become known for a diversity of form due to her combination of everyday materials and photographs applied through principles of assemblage. Inspired by memories and influenced by surrealist photography, Messager recontextualises fragmented pulp fiction images to subvert their meaning and invoke a sense of self.
"What I admire most about Annette Messager is her ability to balance playfulness with darker reflections on life. Her work is often humorous, imaginative, and mischievous, yet beneath the surface lie themes of mortality, identity, and human experience. It is this tension between lightness and gravity that makes her work so memorable."
Annette Messager, Mes Voeux, 1989, mixed media. Image courtesy: Museum of Contemporary Art Australia.
Penny Slinger
Penny Slinger (b. 1947) became active in the late 1960s. Charged with a sense of social change and sexual freedom, her work encapsulates the cultural zeitgeist of the decade. Using photomontage, Slinger describes her work as ‘feminist surrealism’, with her visual language exploring the female psyche whilst using her own body to depict the interplay between sexuality and mysticism.
"Penny Slinger's work is fearless. She combines surrealism, feminism, and personal mythology to create images that are both seductive and unsettling. I admire the freedom with which she explores the female psyche, challenging conventions while constructing powerful alternative narratives. Her work remains as provocative and relevant today as when it was first created."
Penny Slinger, I Speak What I See, 1973, photographic collage. Image courtesy of Virginia Damtsa.
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