October 15–19, 2025
The Regent's Park, London
Galleries Section: Booth B12

Peter Blum Gallery will exhibit a dual presentation of works by Nicholas Galanin and Rebecca Ward. Both artists’ practices create unique commentaries through techniques, materials, and motifs oftentimes associated with so-called “craft.”

Whether employing sewing, carving, dyeing, metalwork, or using existing decorative motifs, both artists reconfigure the potentials of these media, and how they can be used to remark on wider topics. While sometimes differing in materials and subject matter, the artists will create a dialogue exploring the potentials of how diverse craft-associated techniques can elicit new perspectives.

Nicholas Galanin

Examining the complexities of contemporary Indigenous identity, culture, and representation, Nicholas Galanin works from his experience as a Lingít and Unangax artist. Embedding incisive observation and reflection into his oftentimes provocative work, he aims to redress the widespread misappropriation of Indigenous visual culture, the impact of colonialism, as well as collective amnesia. Galanin reclaims narrative and creative agency, while demonstrating contemporary Indigenous art as a continually evolving practice. Speaking through multiple visual, sonic, and tactile languages, his concepts determine his processes, which include sculpture, installation, photography, video, performance, and textile-based work. This contemporary practice builds upon an Indigenous artistic continuum while celebrating the culture and its people; Galanin contributes urgent criticality and vision through resonant and multifaceted works.

Nicholas Galanin (b. 1979) lives and works in Sheet’ka (Sitka), Alaska. He earned a BFA at LondonGuildhall University (2003), an MFA at Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand (2007), and apprenticed with master carvers and jewelers. Solo institutional exhibitions include Baltimore Museum of Art (2024-25); SITE Santa Fe (2023); and New York Public Art Fund (2023). Galanin participated in Public Art Abu Dhabi (2024-25); Boston Triennial (2025); Toronto Biennial (2024); Liverpool Biennial (2023); Desert X, Palm Springs (2021); Biennale of Sydney (2020); and Whitney Biennial, New York (2019). He has received Don Tyson Award (2025); Guggenheim Fellowship (2024); Pollock Krasner Grant (2023); Soros Art Fellowship (2020); and American Academy of Arts and Letters (2020).

Rebecca Ward

Rebecca Ward's practice merges painting, sculpture, and craft by physically deconstructing and reassembling canvases to create geometrically grounded works. By exposing the multidimensional nature of painting and its constituent parts, Ward creates a spatial play of harmonious forms and color interactions that explore the relationship between the mathematical and the natural world. Through a manipulation of reassembled materials and viscous gradients, the artist explores spectrums—both literal and metaphorical—where shadow and form transcend their physical boundaries. The work invites viewers to contemplate the delicate nature of perception, blurring the lines between the tangible and the ethereal. Ghostly silhouettes, fragmented and elusive, emerge from the translucency of unwoven canvas, embodying the shifting forms that shape understanding of reality. Her works incorporate both hard-edged and curving forms that emerge from rectangular canvas planes, with varying scales, tonalities, and configurations. The shapes originate as digital drawings within a mathematical space—a vector that can be infinitely large or small—before being enclosed within the confines of stretcher bars. This initial step of creating sketches involves layering dissected forms and diverse shades that persist in the final handcrafted, sculptural objects. The titles add layers of associations and a signature of Ward’s practice over the past decade has included taking fabric apart by removing the weft to create a new and transparent image that both exposes and obscures the underlying stretcher bars.

Rebecca Ward (b. 1984, Waco, TX) lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. She earned a BA at the University of Texas, Austin, TX (2006) and an MFA at the School of the Visual Arts, New York, NY (2012). Institutional exhibitions include Rebecca Ward: distance to venus, SITE Santa Fe, Santa Fe, NM (2022); Fresh Faces from the Rachofsky Collection, Site 131, Dallas, TX (2021); Over & Over, Columbia College, Chicago, IL (2018); Rebecca Ward, The FLAG Art Foundation, New York, NY (2017); Eastwing Biennial: Artificial Realities, The Courtauld Institute of Art, London, UK (2016); Making & Unmaking, Camden Art Centre, London, UK (2016); The Tim Sayer Bequest, The Hepworth Wakefield, West Yorkshire, United Kingdom (2016); Linear Abstraction, Savannah College of Art and Design, Savannah, GA (2015); Rebecca Ward: indulgences, Exchiesetta, Polignano a Mare, Italy (2015). Residencies include Shandaken: Storm King Art Center, New Windsor, NY (2016) and Atelier Alighiero Boetti, Todi, Italy (2013).