Cole-Levi Klimt presents No Life Without Death, a thought-provoking group exhibition curated by Chelsey Chase at The Lightbox Museum, Woking. Bringing together painting, sculpture, photography and installation. The exhibition explores the profound relationship between mortality and renewal, examining how grief, memory and transformation shape the human experience. Featuring works by emerging and established contemporary artists, No Life Without Death invites audiences to reflect on loss not as an ending, but as an essential force that gives life greater depth, meaning and urgency.
Grief, fatigue, apprehension—quiet forces that settle into the body and shape how we move through the world. Often unseen, they dull presence, narrow possibility, and turn life inward when left unacknowledged.
No Life Without Death considers loss not as an endpoint, but as an inseparable condition of living. Death is not something that follows life; it lives within it, informing our fears, our desires, and our capacity to remain open. When grief is resisted, life contracts. When it is faced, life sharpens and is experienced. Yet within this reckoning lies clarity. Mortality lends urgency to tenderness and meaning to endurance. Life is not diminished by death, but intensified by it—shaped, focused, and made fragile.
About the Curator: Chelsey Chase
Chelsey Chase is a British curator, cultural programmer, art dealer and music producer whose practice is rooted in bringing people together through creativity. In the early stages of her curatorial career, she founded Cole-Levi Klimt with the ambition of creating accessible and thought-provoking exhibitions that champion both emerging and established contemporary artists.
Drawing upon her background in music, events and cultural programming, Chase has developed a keen eye for talent, working with respected creatives across disciplines ranging from electronic music and live performance to painting, sculpture and contemporary visual art. Her interdisciplinary approach to curation is driven by a belief that creativity flourishes through collaboration and cultural exchange.
No Life Without Death follows Ephemeral Imprints and Renewal, marking the continued evolution of her curatorial practice. Alongside her work in the visual arts, Chase maintains a deep connection to music, recognising the shared ability of both disciplines to evoke emotion, build communities and preserve cultural narratives.
Cole-Levi Klimt Artists
Paul Freud: Paul Freud’s multidisciplinary practice examines the psychological complexities of the human condition through painting, drawing and sculpture. Informed by themes of memory, vulnerability and emotional introspection, his work navigates the tension between figuration and abstraction, offering deeply personal yet universally resonant explorations of identity and the subconscious. Through layered imagery and expressive mark-making, Freud invites audiences to contemplate the fragile and often unseen dimensions of human experience.
Meryl Donoghue: Working across photography, cyanotype, sculpture and installation, Meryl Donoghue creates immersive works that investigate memory, archaeology, mythology and the natural world. Through experimental photographic processes and carefully assembled objects, her practice blurs the boundaries between science and folklore, inviting viewers into landscapes where history, ritual and imagination coexist. Her work balances the poetic with the uncanny, encouraging reflection on humanity’s relationship with time, place and mortality.
Eva Yates: A graduate of the Royal College of Art MA Painting programme, Eva Yates is a contemporary figurative painter whose work explores beauty culture, vulnerability and psychological experience through a distinctive neo-surrealist lens. Combining classical painting techniques with contemporary symbolism, her richly textured compositions examine themes of identity, anxiety and self-perception, challenging conventional ideals of perfection while revealing beauty in imperfection and transformation
Guest Artists
Orly Kritzman: Kritzman’s practice is centred on material-led narrative, exploring both the personal and political through clay, text and acts of disruption. Working with artefacts chosen for their geopolitical and material histories, she manipulates and transforms them to examine themes of identity, belonging, memory and resilience. Using clay as both medium and metaphor, Kritzman embeds traces of making, breaking and repair within her works, creating what she describes as a form of “future archaeology.” Through obscured text and material intervention, her practice reflects on silenced voices, displacement and the enduring strength found within fragility.
Ana Luiza Rodrigues: Represented by Ricardo Fernandes Gallery Ana works across photography, sculpture, installation and performance, Ana Luiza Rodrigues explores memory, transformation and the emotional resonance of everyday objects. Rooted in poetic observation and material experimentation, her multidisciplinary practice examines the relationship between body, space and identity, creating immersive works that balance beauty with the uncanny and invite viewers into moments of contemplation
Charlotte Worthington: Worthington is a London based artist who graduated from the Royal College of Art (MA Painting, 2024). Before returning to painting, she worked for several years in the TV industry as an animator and a documentary producer/director. Her work explores the emotional and psychological spaces of the domestic and the familiar. Through painting, textiles, metal, stuffing and stitching, she pieces together fragmented narratives drawn from personal memory and recurring experiences.
No Life Without Death presents a carefully curated selection of artworks exploring themes of mortality, transformation, memory, inner peace, understanding and the fragility of the human experience in an increasingly chaotic world. Bringing together painting, sculpture, photography and installation, the exhibition considers death not as an end, but as an essential counterpart to life itself, inviting audiences to reflect on grief, resilience and the cycles that shape the human experience.
Presented by Cole-Levi Klimt at The Lightbox Museum, Woking, the exhibition continues the gallery’s commitment to supporting emerging and established contemporary artists through ambitious, thought-provoking exhibitions that encourage dialogue and make contemporary art accessible to wider audiences.
No lIfe Without Death at the LIGHTBOX Museum, Woking, U.K. – Opens 17th June Soft Preview – Private View 20th June – Closes 28th June 2026
Website: www.cole-leviklimt.com
