At Saatchi Gallery, Spectral Interference marks a powerful new chapter for London-based painter Anna Liber Lewis. Presented by Hannah Payne Art, this major solo exhibition unveils a striking body of work that departs from the artist’s earlier grid-based practice, embracing abstraction as a space of risk, physicality and perceptual tension.
Bringing together new and recent paintings, the exhibition captures Liber Lewis at a pivotal moment in her career, as she pushes beyond rigid structures into a more fluid, instinctive visual language. Here, surfaces are built up, scraped back and reworked in cycles of revision, creating compositions that feel alive with movement and uncertainty. The result is a compelling exploration of control and release, where gesture, memory and material collide in works that are as visceral as they are intellectually charged.
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.
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.”
Anna Liber Lewis
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).
Anna Liber Lewis (b.1977) lives and works in London. She graduated with a BA from Central Saint Martins in 2001 and was the 2013 recipient of the Genesis Foundation Scholarship to study at the Royal College of Art, gaining an MFA in 2015. She was awarded the Moich Abrahams Prize for Most Innovative Work at The London Group Century Open (2013) and received both the Griffin Arts Prize and the Young Contemporary Talent Prize, supported by the Ingram Collection, in 2017.
Hannah Payne Art is a nomadic gallery platform working between Oxford and London, supporting emerging and mid-career artists through ambitious exhibitions, institutional collaborations, and dialogue-led programming. Hannah Payne Art champions artists at pivotal moments in their careers, supporting the development and presentation of ambitious new work through thoughtfully curated exhibitions and public-facing programming.
Anna Liber Lewis ‘Spectral Interference’, Presented by Hannah Payne Art is in Gallery 1, Ground Floor, Saatchi Gallery from 27th March to 6th May 2026. Find more information here.
