Oneiric
Margarita Franceska Loze , Misha Horacek, Samantha Sweeting
Julian Wild, and Jane Woollatt
Curated by Adela Blanco
Blanco Gallery is pleased to present Oneiric, an exhibition curated by Adela Blanco and featuring the work of London-based artists Margarita Frančeska Loze, Misha Horacek, Samantha Sweeting, Julian Wild, and Jane Woollatt. The term oneiric, meaning ‘relating to dreams’, reflects the exhibition’s engagement with the shifting terrain of memory, dreams and imagination. Through Julian Wild’s sculptures, the textiles and installations of Jane Woollatt and Margarita Loze, and the projection of the short film Daughters of Blodeuwedd by Misha Horacek and Samantha Sweeting, the artworks evoke the elusive ways in which recollections surface - part fact, part invention - within an atmosphere that encourages contemplation and discovery.
Echoing the mythic origins of the film, Oneiric takes place in a setting imbued with history and storytelling. The House Mill is a Grade I listed heritage building constructed in 1776 on the medieval foundations of an earlier mill. Standing on an island on the River Lea, it forms part of the historic Three Mills complex, with origins recorded in the Domesday Book of 1086. Its vast wooden interiors, weathered textures and time-worn beams carry a quiet poetry, embodying traces of past events. This atmosphere resonates profoundly with Oneiric’s dream-infused aesthetic, making the site not merely a backdrop but an active participant in the exhibition’s unfolding narrative.
Daughters of Blodeuwedd
Trailer for the Short Film by Misha Horacek & Samantha Sweeting
Two otherworldly figures commune with the forest, set deep within the grey cliffs of Wales, where the Celtic myth of Blodeuwedd still reverberates.
They move fleetingly through the body of trees, branches snapping beneath their bare feet like bones, as they wind a long red umbilical cord, whispering incantations in the language of the woods.
Anticipating the violent felling to come, they spill milk from their mouths and lay foraged fruit and wildflowers into the open wound of a fallen pine. An owl watches from afar.
The exhibition is open from the 2nd to the 13th of October.
at The Miller’s House, Three Mill Ln, London E3 3DU
London
Opening Thursday 2nd of October
18:00 - 21:00
The Artists
Margarita Franceska Loze
Her artistic practice is a celebration of the poetics of the everyday, rooted in experimental phenomenology, imagined landscapes and forms of memory such as déjà vu and nostalgia. She approaches textiles through an experimental lens, captivated by their potential to form sculptural works, while incorporating found objects, air-dry clay and metal wire as structural components within this expanded embroidery practice to explore a variety of surfaces and create fragmented compositions. Playfully engaging with organic forms and cut-outs as motifs of the lunar phase, she draws attention to the sun, seasonal change, calendars and the cyclical rhythm of day and night. Her colour palette references patterns found in flora and fauna, and she frequently incorporates natural elements such as leaves, branches and flowers. Through this practice she seeks to illuminate the fragile qualities of life, embracing imperfections and deconstructing the objects we leave behind, inviting deeper contemplation of their transient nature and of our human role within the ecosystem.
Misha Horacek
Misha Horacek is a Canadian Czech performing artist working internationally, whose practice emerges from the lived experience of inhabiting a female body and is inspired by Japanese Butoh dance, where the body becomes a conduit for the spirit present in all things—objects, places, weather patterns, emotions and creatures. At the core of her work lies the theme of relationship: the relationship of the human body to place, to the Earth and to time. Her practice carries a sense of yearning, tinged with nostalgia, as she reaches towards something not yet known in an ongoing quest for wholeness. Attuning herself to the expressions of seasons and cycles of change, both in the human body and in nature, she draws inspiration from rituals that mark moments of transformation. Through durational performance and time-based art practices, she explores body mythology—the memories, images, ideas, gestures, personas and narratives that form the poetics of the body-psyche.
Samantha Sweeting
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Samantha Sweeting is an interdisciplinary artist and psychotherapist based in London. After completing postgraduate art training in rural England, she relocated to a forest in the French Pyrenees, where she lived among wild boar and deer, swam in mountain lakes, and spent time on the neighbouring sheep farm. This period of feral enquiry continues to inform much of her ongoing practice. Drawing upon memory, fairy tales, psychoanalysis, home and motherhood, her work uses embodied storytelling to examine human and animal nature and nurture. She primarily makes videos, performances and installations, often working site-specifically, outdoors, and alongside animals. In parallel to her creative practice, Samantha has spent many years working in healthcare, in residential settings, including private homes, hospitals, and therapeutic communities. She is particularly interested in how we develop our sense of self and our imaginations in relation to the places we inhabit, starting from our original home inside the mother’s body. Samantha has performed and exhibited across the UK and internationally. Her artwork has been featured in numerous publications, and is part of the Birth Rights Collection and the Moby Dick Big Read project.
Julian Wild
Julian Wild is a British sculptor whose work alludes to minimalist traditions while introducing playful interventions and gestures that disrupt form, surface and structure. Colour plays a central role in his practice, acting as an agent to heighten contrast, draw attention to formal relationships, or give an object presence in space, with vibrant hues often referencing industrial palettes and modernist sculpture. From his pared-down System Series to the more recent Crush sculptures, Wild has consistently investigated sculptural language through material, form and surface, driven by a desire to present his perspective on a world characterised by both extraordinary human achievements and profound failures. Working with fabricated and found materials, he often subverts their purpose with a sense of humour, creating works that occupy the space between finish and failure, structure and spontaneity, precision and impulse. His sculptures, marked by twists, interruptions and visual contradictions, invite reflection on the human condition—its tensions, absurdities and subtleties—while offering space for curiosity and play.
Jane Woollatt
Jane is a London-based artist whose practice has evolved over many years alongside a long career in the NHS as a nurse therapist, and now in retirement she is able to focus fully on making art that draws deeply on lived experience. Her work centres on female bodily events—moments of transformation that are physical, psychological and social—while exploring themes of identity, grief and metamorphosis through soft sculptural forms that often begin with found objects and incorporate materials and techniques associated with domestic labour and care. She reflects on cycles of life, inheritance and continuity, considering the complex interplay between nurture, memory and belonging, and how these shape her understanding of generational ties. Conversational and intuitive in approach, she listens, questions and draws out hidden narratives, bridging the psychological and physical realms to create pieces that are both conceptually layered and materially grounded. Staged with a quiet theatricality, her works blur the lines between fact and fiction, memory and imagination, inviting reflection on the everyday and the extraordinary, the personal and the universal.