Huxley-Parlour is pleased to present After the fire, an exhibition of new work by London-based artist Catherine Long (b. 1982). This exhibition marks Long’s first solo show in London and her first with Huxley-Parlour. Long’s paintings propose abstraction as an embodied encounter, an experience that precedes language and registers first as bodily sensation.

Working across multiple canvases simultaneously, Long builds compositions through successive sessions of improvisation and return. Rooted in the artist’s formative training in contemporary dance and ongoing somatic practice, these works treat the canvas as a choreographic field: a site activated through rhythm, gravity, and the body’s intuitive intelligence.

Marks are laid down with the urgency of gesture, mobilising the artist’s full body in relation to the canvas as an arena of space. These marks are then revised through layering, drying, observation and renewal, allowing the paintings to accumulate as records of both movement and time, of decisions made and remade.