57 (Lydia Makin)

Info

About PM/AM

PM/AM is a contemporary art gallery located on the border of Soho and Fitzorovia in the heart of London. It hosts a busy programme of shows across the two exhibition floors of the Eastcastle Street space. The gallery’s lower ground floor studio provides the location for a residency space for international and under-represented artists to develop their practice. Together the spaces form a unique cultural and creative hub in the bustling centre of the city.

PM/AM’s mission is to reflect through art how we engage with ourselves and the world today, expressed through the artists it is fortunate enough to work with. Recent graduates, those emerging into the spotlight and in their mid-careers on the international stage all feature across a dynamic programme. The gallery works on the vanguard of the emerging art sector, responsible for finding artists of tomorrow, and is keen to explore and present work originating from the many interlocking diasporas of the world. PM/AM’s plays a part in the incubation of contemporary art’s future by representing a carefully selected roster of artists, working with them to initiate and grow lasting careers in the global art world.

As a dynamic arts organisation PM/AM’s activities extend beyond exhibitions into consultation, publications and editorial, providing the means to facilitate placements with collectors and institutions, and create extended content to further support and expose the artists we work with. This self-contained structure is key to the gallery’s broad outlook and capabilities, however we value collaborations with external writers, curators and other galleries to realise our goals.



Exhibition Text

There must be a painting totally free of the dependence on the figure or object [...]. Such painting would evoke the incommunicable kingdoms of the spirit, where dream becomes thought, where line becomes existence—Michel Seuphor, in Benjamin Moser’s Introductory essay ‘Breathing Together’ for Clarice Lispector’s ‘Agua Viva’.

Lydia Makin’s work embodies a synthesis of spiritual dynamism, harmonising the inherent tensions between urban environments and natural forces, while navigating the dualities of growth and destruction that unite them. Raised in Edingley, Nottinghamshire, Makin moved to London to refine her artistic practice, finding inspiration in the kinetic allure of the city. Her work, which integrates urban and natural impulses, extends beyond mere representation—inviting viewers to contemplate their own positionality within a third space: Makin’s envisioned realm.

While Makin’s art evokes the lineage of spiritualist abstract painters, postmodern mysticism, and abstract expressionism, her practice feels distinctly futuristic. In today’s fractured artistic landscape, where the past is perpetually re-engaged yet never fully resurrected, Makin’s work surpasses the traditional modernist impulse. Striving for spiritual transcendence and cultivating a multi-temporal vision that navigates the currents of time, she conjures a new utopian space. Influenced by spiritualist abstraction and modernist painters, Makin’s work was further shaped by a formative trip to Rome five years ago, where she became fascinated with the theatricality of old masters such as Caravaggio—particularly The Seven Works of Mercy—Goya, and Raphael. Captivated by the textural flow of cascading silks in baroque and neoclassical painting, Makin sought to replicate this sense of movement and revelation in her own practice.

Her paintings delve into the concept of unveiling, not merely in their formal execution, but as an embodied process of creation that transcends technical proficiency, privileging fluidity. The paintbrush becomes an organic extension of her body, engaging in a dialogue shaped by perceptual responsiveness. For Makin, painting assumes an almost ecclesiastical significance, offering her a means of transcending corporeal boundaries, forging an inseparability between the temporal and the spatial, while simultaneously negotiating the tensions inherent between the two.

Makin notes that her goal as an artist is to cultivate something new and unexpected in each work, a sentiment that resonates throughout her compositions, which pulse with frenetic, cellular energy. Visions of a thousand electric wings clap and close in on themselves, conjuring something altogether novel while what pre-exists reposes just beneath the surface. Makin’s commitment to spontaneity should not be mistaken for indifference, her brushstrokes are executed with deliberate assertiveness or not at all, retaining an unmistakable directness that anchors her compositions. The scale of her paintings demands an immersive encounter; to stand in their presence is not merely to observe, but to inhabit an altered reality, one that is both spatially overwhelming and metaphysically charged. Her emphasis, shifting away from representational accuracy towards expressive form and colour, enacts an ontological shift between the self, space, and the metaphysical dimensions her work invokes.

In a world symptomatic of isolatory culture—where we are distanced from vibrancy and rawness, inhabiting extremes of either emotional excess or emptiness—Makin’s work resists apathy and rigidity. Her brushstrokes move like resurrected spectres, manifesting the transient eroticism of reawakened and ever-shifting realms. There is a palpable vigour to her paintings: thorns intertwine with soft contortions, jagged lines border gentle brushstrokes; Makin’s world is not without its defences. Her works’ hypnotic quality elicits a profound captivation, thawing inherent numbness and inviting viewers to engage with her world beyond superficial observation. Her first subject, not dissimilar to her abstract world of thorns and spectres, was the castle, which she obsessively drew as a child. Her grand, cascading paintings now appear as evolutions of her primal inclination–while her works possess a surface softness, an undercurrent of wild, ravenous energy pulses beneath, guarded by luminous weavings that encapsulate both beauty and terror. To engage with Makin’s world is to approach it as if it were still her first castle: luring lost travellers in from mute cement and rolling hills, calling them to question what lies encased at the centre. Makin articulates that her paintings function in this way, as a ‘portal,’ beckoning the viewer into their own senses, dream worlds, and inner symbolic lives. This invitation is not prescriptive but expansive, offering a site where the observer’s personal desires, longings, and emotional landscape might emerge. While her work may inspire, she refrains from positioning it as a panacea, asserting that its transformative potential remains at the discretion of the viewer. 

Isabella Greenwood
October, 2024



CV

Born: 1997, Nottingham, England.
Lives and works in London.

Education

2024 - MA Fine Art, The Royal College of Art.
2020 - BA Fine Art, Slade School of Fine Art.

Solo Exhibitions

2024 - 57. PM/AM, London (online).
2023 - Catharsis in the Flame. Studio West, London.

Group Exhibitions

2024 - 54 (What Now?). PM/AM, London.
2023 - The Butterfly Effect. D Contemporary, London.
2022 - Introducing. Gallery Rosenfeld, London.
2022 - The Reality in Whytch you Create. Studio West, London.
2020 - Piccadilly Lights, Circa, W1 London.
2020 - Drawn Together. Unit London, (online).
2018 - The Hix Award. Hix Art Gallery, London.

Residencies/Awards

2024 - Artist in Residence at PM/AM, London.