Lisa Brice Untitled, 2025 Watercolour and flashe on claybord 40.6 x 30.5 x 2.2 cm 16 x 12 1/8 x 7/8 inches 42.6 x 32.5 x 3.2 cm (incl frame) 16 7/8 x 12 7/8 x 1 3/8 inches (incl frame) Courtesy the artist and sadie coles hq, london. Sadie Coles HQ

For the opening of Sadie Coles HQ’s Savile Row townhouse, Lisa Brice presents a new body of work in three sequential groups that guide the viewer through the gallery’s spaces. 

Using repeated perspectives to form an architectural horizon, the paintings offer a visual parade of empowered women, poised and alert.

Known for depicting women in interior and working environments, Brice addresses the erosion of safety in contemporary society. 

Her subjects embody collective assertiveness and self-protection, subverting traditional hierarchies—they are David rather than Goliath, Judith rather than Holofernes. 

Historical references to Gentileschi, Caravaggio, Manet, and Magritte, alongside Honor Blackman’s 1965 Book of Self Defence, inform these depictions of women actively asserting control over their circumstances.

Brice transforms the often-passive observation of women in 19th- and early 20th-century French painting into a brooding solidarity of resistance. 

Lisa Brice Untitled, 2025 Pigment and natural water soluble binders on linen 186.4 x 61.3 x 3.2 cm Sadie Coles HQ

Figures appear on the horizon of a bar, ready for action with makeshift weapons, and re-emerge in a smokily-lit fight club, their mirrored poses preparing them for confrontation. 

Across all three groups, the palette is subdued—black, red, brown, and grey—drawing inspiration from Bruegel’s Christ and the Woman Taken in Adultery and Goya’s Black Paintings, imbuing the works with gravitas.

Through these compositions, Brice highlights the strength of collective action, showing women unified in resistance, ready to confront oppression with vigilance, skill, and solidarity.

Lisa Brice’s paintings challenge the male gaze in Western art, presenting women as empowered and self-determining. Her luminous cobalt and cerulean figures inhabit intimate, reflective spaces where labor, defiance, and autonomy intersect.

Born in Cape Town in 1968, Brice studied at the Michaelis School of Fine Art and later completed residencies in London and Trinidad, experiences that shaped her feminist and cross-cultural approach. 

Lisa Brice Untitled, 2025 Pigment and natural water soluble binders on linen 122.3 x 75.5 x 3 cm Sadie Coles HQ

Working in oil and ink, her layered compositions incorporate motifs like mirrors, smoke, and thresholds, redirecting the viewer’s gaze and asserting each subject’s agency.

Engaging with art-historical figures such as Manet and Millais, Brice transforms historical narratives into assertive, self-knowing portraits. 

Notable works include No Bare Back, After Embah (2017) and Smoke and Mirrors (2021). Her practice has been featured in Life Between Islands (Tate Britain, 2021), Mixing It Up (Hayward Gallery, 2021), and Capturing the Moment (Tate Modern, 2023–24).

Lisa Brice Untitled, 2025 Watercolour and flashe on claybord 45.5 x 60.9 x 2.3 cm 47.6 x 63 x 3.4 cm (incl frame) Sadie Coles HQ

In 2025, Brice inaugurated Sadie Coles HQ’s Savile Row space with Keep Your Powder Dry, a solo exhibition portraying women in states of alertness and resistance, blending sensuality with painterly discipline to explore solidarity and self-protection.

Established in London in 1997 by Sadie Coles, Sadie Coles HQ is a leading contemporary art gallery representing more than fifty established and emerging artists from around the world.

 Renowned for its influential and critically acclaimed programme, the gallery has played a key role in shaping Britain’s contemporary art scene over the past two decades, particularly through its representation of many Young British Artists (YBAs).

Before founding her own gallery, Sadie Coles worked for six years under prominent art dealer Anthony d’Offay, an experience that shaped her curatorial approach.

 The gallery’s first exhibition featured John Currin, presented alongside Sarah Lucas’s solo show The Law in a disused office in Clerkenwell—an unconventional choice that set the gallery’s tone as a space willing to push boundaries beyond the traditional “white cube.”

Over the years, Sadie Coles HQ has grown and relocated several times, maintaining its reputation for innovative exhibitions in distinctive venues. 

It currently operates two permanent spaces—on Kingly Street in Soho and Bury Street in St James’s—and will expand further in autumn 2025 with a new six-storey Georgian townhouse on Savile Row, Mayfair.

The gallery’s roster includes long-term collaborators such as Sarah Lucas, Matthew Barney, Ugo Rondinone, Urs Fischer, and Richard Prince, as well as the estate of Angus Fairhurst. 

Committed to championing new talent, Sadie Coles HQ has in recent years added artists like Alex Da Corte, Borna Sammak, Kati Heck, Martine Syms, Lawrence Lek, Agnes Scherer, Tau Lewis, and Dada Khanyisa.

Internationally active, the gallery participates in major art fairs including Frieze London, Tokyo Gendai, West Bund Art & Design in Shanghai, and Art Basel in Paris, Hong Kong, and Basel.

 Its ongoing programmes—such as the GARGLE series of live invitational events—continue to reinforce Sadie Coles HQ’s role as a driving force in the evolution of global contemporary art.