Viewing ‘The Body Speaks’ at Guts Gallery

One of the successes to emerge from the pandemic, Guts Gallery in East London has forged a path ‘championing’ rather than representing young artists in a new approach to the often exploitative commercial gallery model. The Gallery’s first show of 2025 is a radical rethink of the body in contemporary art.

The group exhibition – featuring works by five young artists – presents fluid and expressive forms, bodies that are both sensual and fleshy, but at the same time malleable and ever changing. As the show’s title implies, this show galvansies bodies’ potential to communicate our rich inner world and psychic experiences.

We particularly love Shadi Al-Atallah’s large-scale mixed media works of genderless forms in flux, referencing queer ballrooms and folkloric dance traditions from across the African diaspora. They have an intense and irrepressible rhythm and energy, with chalky, bold lines and hazy, otherworldly washes of colour applied with speed and urgency to the canvas.