"An air of mystery might be invoked by the titular acronym as you climb two floors close to Arnold Circus in Shoreditch. That’s dispelled once you know that SLQS Gallery was founded – in 2024 – by Sarah Le Quang Sang. In the face of persisting inequalities in the art world, she concentrates explicitly on female and queer artists. That is to say, I suppose, getting on for 60% of the total, so not all that restrictive – and no bar at all to quality, as is apparent ten shows in. The gallery also looks to disrupt ‘outdated frameworks, such as neatly defined industry classifications “emerging” and “mid-career”, which often exclude artists balancing caregiving responsibilities or working outside conventional timelines’.
Highlights delivered by the vision have included Hoa Dung Clerget’s account of the Vietnamese diaspora presented using the materials of nail art; Damaris Athena’s exploration of ’undercurrents’; and Diana Taylor’s collapsing the visual grammar of digital and analogue through her paintings in both the opening group show and an off-site project in Los Angeles. The current exhibition is also a winner: Beverley Duckworth sets up an irrigation system to grow seeds in the gallery, leading to changing and residual artworks addressing issues of networking and resistance. Duckworth explains her aim here as creating ‘spaces and moments which connect the smallest poetic gestures of plants with the social and ecological precarity shaping contemporary life’."
Read here.