key data
- Venue
- Galerie Kunst im Traklhaus
- Date
- 25. 7. – 13. 9. 25
After studying together at The Royal Drawing School in London in 2021, Tilson and Blease found common ground in their ideologies and processes. In 2022, they began teaching printmaking at The Summer Academy in Salzburg, now returning for their fourth year. From teaching their summer classes in the Hohensalzburg Fortress, to being artists in residence at the Grafische Werkstatt im Traklhaus, Salzburg has become a key site of production and creative exchange for them.
Tilson creates illusionary spaces built from pattern — layered, camouflaged, and constantly in motion. Pattern, for Tilson, is a language of energy and transformation. It can obscure, reveal, distract or dazzle. Figures emerge and disappear through a scintillating surface of painted marks, their forms enveloped in veils of translucent pigment. Distorted by folding fabrics, Tilson’s work explores the tension between visibility and concealment, surface and depth, control and chaos.
In Blease’s work similar tensions are realized albeit in different ways. Concerned with the subjective reality of living, Blease makes work about the urban landscape. First doing sketches in the streets, he then translates these notes into etchings and sculptures, attempting to harness and recreate the frenetic and anxious energy of contemporary metropolitan life. Through his totemic sculptures reminiscent of architectural models, and his loose, tactile etchings, Blease poses questions about modern living and the daily grind of work and leisure, business and pleasure, whilst casting a wary look at the persistent development and infinite ‘growth’ of the modern era.
Hannah Tilson
Hannah Tilson (b. 1995) lives and works in London. She earned a BA from the Slade School of Fine Art (2018), completed the Royal Drawing School’s Drawing Year (2021), and attended the New York Studio School exchange. She was an artist-in-residence at Plop (2024) and Palazzo Monti (Sept 2022). Tilson participated in the Whitechapel Gallery Art Icon 2024 and published a monograph in 2023.
Tilson works in a variety of media: painting, mixing raw pigments and binder, drawing, printmaking, and embroidering. Building up layers of translucent and opaque colours, concealing and revealing parts of the image, Tilson camouflages herself in vibrating and fragmented spaces filled with patterns. She views her body and the fabrics encompassing her as a landscape/pattern of rhythmic and geometric forms. The figure disappears and reappears, sometimes being completely swallowed up by the fabrics, while at other times a hand or a shoe surfaces, taking the viewer closer to their own reality. The ambiguous shapes become a changeable part of this layered world, allowing the viewer to question what they see. In this fast-moving, turbulent space, abstracted through the pattern lens, something seems familiar, yet abstract … Nothing is as it seems.
Website
Exhibitions
Solo exhibitions
2025 Staged Surfaces, Cedric Bardawil, London.
Bridge I Brücke (with Otis Blease), kura-t kunstraum traklhaus, Salzburg (AT).
2023 Soft Cut, Cedric Bardawil, London
2021 Swoosh, Well Projects, Margate (UK).
2017 Tongue and Chic, Peckham Pelican, London.
2016 Hannah Tilson Final Exhibit, NYSS, New York, NY (US).
Group exhibitions
2025 Artistic Noise Charity Auction, Kasmin Gallery, New York, NY.
Great Ormond Street Charity Auction, Christies, London.
London Original Print Fair, Somerset House, London.
Woolwich Contemporary Print Fair.
2024 Whitechapel Gallery Art Icon, London.
Tessellations, Cedric Bardawil, London.
Patterns of Intimacy, MINT Gallery, Munich (DE).
London Original Print Fair, Advanced Graphics stand, Somerset House, London.
Drawn Together, Royal Drawing School Summer Exhibition, London.
Woolwich Contemporary Print Fair, Binder of Women & Advanced Graphics, London.
Art on a Postcard – International Women’s Day Auction. Fierce Form, Baert Gallery, Los Angeles, CA (US).
2023 Phantom Brush, A plus A, Venice (IT).
Cure3, Bonhams, London.
London Art Fair, Stand von Advanced Graphics, London.
2022 London Art Fair, Advanced Graphics booth, London.
DREAM BABY DREAM, Paint talk at Fitzrovia gallery, London.
2021 Best of the Drawing Year, Christies, London.
Small is Beautiful XXXIX, Flowers Gallery Cork Street, London.
Salvaje Y Dulce, Galerie Badr El Jundi, Marbella (ES).
The Drawing Year End of Year Exhibition, Royal Drawing School, London.
The Drawing Room, Berntson Bhattacharjee, London.
Pacific Breeze II, White Conduit Projects, London.
ArtUk Auction, Online. Original Paper Works, Online.
2020 Cure3, Bonhams, London.
London Art Fair, Advanced Graphics both, London.
2019 Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, Royal Academy of Arts, London.
Guts Gallery Inaugural Exhibition, Guts Gallery, London.
Voi rubate del tempo alla fretta a noi il mare ci impone lentezza, Castro Projects, Rom.
18/11/1, PMQ, Hong Kong.
2018 Paper Cuts, The Saatchi Gallery, London.
The Lotus Eaters, Aindrea Contemporary, London.
BA Degree Show, Slade School of Fine Art, London.
Hot Milk, Post Institute, London.
The Pink Panther Show, Gallery 46, London.
2017 From Cornucopia, Center for Recent Drawing, London.
2016 Art is the Highest Form of Hope, NYSS, New York, NY.
Topless Palaces, NYSS, New York, NY.
Legumes, 4 Malden Road, London.
Publications
Steer, Emily, 10 Must-see shows during Frieze London 2025, in: Artsy, 2025.
https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-10-must-see-frieze-london-2025
Hallstrom Sofia, How to do Frieze Week 2025, According to Insiders, in: Artsy, 2025.
https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-frieze-week-2025-insiders
Parker, Billy, Frieze London 2025, Everything to see and do, in: the Evening Standard, 2025.
https://www.standard.co.uk/culture/exhibitions/frieze-london-2025-must-see-shows-b1252287.html
Hobas, Vannia, Swooshing Perpetually like a river unfolding in front of us, in: Magazin 53a, 2025.
https://magazin53a.net/hannah-tilson-swooshing-perpetually/
Otis Blease
Otis Blease (b. 1996) studied drawing and printmaking at the University of West England, Bristol, in 2018, where he was awarded the Dumfries House Residency on graduation. In 2019, he undertook a postgraduate scholarship course at The Royal Drawing School. Both drawing and printmaking continue to form the basis of much of his work, in addition to sculpture and painting. His work is often an amalgamation of these processes, taking inspiration in instances when these techniques converge.
In his most recent body of work, Otis explored the city, working to capture the frenetic pace of modern life through a series of etchings and sculpture. This culminated in a duo show in Salzburg at The Traklhaus Gallery in 2025. At the heart of his work is always an observation and a questioning of our current and ever-changing relationship with the world around us.
Website
Exhibitions
Exhibitions
2025 Bridge I Brücke (with Hannah Tilson), kura-t kunstraum traklhaus, Salzburg (AT).
2024 Drakes x Wondering People Drakes Saville Row, London.
2021 Reveille, The Violet Hour, London. Factory Exhibition, Thorpe Stavri, London.
Voices in Drawing, Fen Ditton Gallery, Cambridge (UK).
Drawing Year 2019–20 End of Year Show, The Royal Drawing School, London.
Open Studios, SPACE, London.
Best of The Drawing Year 2019–20, Christies, London.
2020 Grays Wharf Summer Show: Tenants and friends of Grays Wharf, Grays Wharf, Penryn (UK). 2018 Con-form, Drawing and Printmaking BA Degree show, Arnolfini, Bristol (UK).
2017 Fortress, Peoples Republic of Stokes Croft, Bristol.
2016 In Residence, Jamaica Street Studios, Bristol.
