Upsilon Gallery, Mayfair unveils Sentire: You Are the April Sky, a poignant exhibition celebrating six international female artists whose works capture the emotional texture of womanhood. Running from 16 April to 31 May 2025 at 64 Grosvenor Street, this thoughtfully curated show
explores the feminine experience as both fleeting and profound — a quiet but powerful force in a changing world.
At the core of the exhibition is the Italian word ‘sentire’—to feel—invoked
by the late Italian poet Alda Merini. Her verse speaks of sensation as an act of being, a full-bodied engagement with the world. Her words are paired with lines from Chinese poet and architect Lin Huiyin, whose imagery of April skies and blooming trees anchors the show’s poetic vision. Together, their works form the thematic backdrop to a gallery space pulsing with colour, texture, and symbolism.
Six Artists. Six Perspectives. One Shared Sensibility.
The exhibition gathers work by Ava Grauls, Diane Chappalley, Epona Smith, Evie Mae Jacobs, Guan Guan, and Hannah Lim—artists whose practices span painting, sculpture, installation, and contemporary jewellery. Together, they form a chorus of narratives that blur the lines between abstraction and figuration, intimacy and identity, tradition and transformation.
1. Ava Grauls, a South African–Belgian artist, works at the intersection of memory, geography, and colonial legacies. Her paintings are abstractions born of cartographic histories and lived experience, questioning whose narratives get mapped and remembered.
2. Diane Chappalley‘s emotive landscapes and ceramics draw from personal trauma and transformation. Her works are rooted in the maternal, infused with religious symbolism, and shaped
by the enduring iconography of the Sacred Heart.
3. Epona Smith brings her hand-engraved silver works to life through a fusion of European craftsmanship and Asian aesthetics, redefining cultural storytelling with every mark etched in metal.
4. Evie Mae Jacobs paints quiet moments of human connection and solitude. Her oil works are studies in texture and stillness, offering soft, contemplative spaces that invite emotional presence.
5. Guan Guan (Yingqi Guan) employs sculpture and performance to challenge social and cultural constructs. Her oversized, often surreal forms tackle feminist themes with irony, precision, and a sharply observant eye.
6. Hannah Lim, whose Singaporean–British heritage informs her interdisciplinary work, reimagines the aesthetic of Chinoiserie to confront and reclaim its colonial roots. Her pieces blur historical
boundaries and open a new conversation on cross-cultural identity.
A Moment to Feel
Each piece in Sentire: You Are the April Sky is a fragment of feeling—a sensory note in a larger symphony of feminine experience. The artworks do not shout, but rather speak softly, insistently, inviting viewers to pause and notice what it means to feel in a fast-moving world.
“To feel is the verb of emotions… You lie down on the back of the world and you feel,” wrote Alda Merini — words that echo through each canvas, sculpture, and line of engraving on view.
The title of the exhibition draws from Lin Huiyin’s poem: “You are the
blooming trees in spring,the swallows whispering under the eaves… You are the April sky in this world.” It’s an homage to the feminine as a source of renewal, grace, and strength—and a reminder that art, like
emotion, lives in the moment it is felt.
???? Event Details Exhibition: Sentire: You Are the April Sky
Dates: 16 April – 31 May 2025
Venue: Upsilon Gallery, 64 Grosvenor Street, London W1K 3JH
Opening Hours: Tuesday to Saturday, 10 am–6 pm (Monday
by appointment)
Opening Reception: Wednesday, 16 April 2025, 6–8 pm