Cavaliero Finn at the London Art Fair: Business Design Centre 52 Upper Street London, N1 0QH

CAVALIERO FINN AT LONDON ART FAIR 2026

Platform: The Unexpected - Curated by Dr Ferren Gipson

Stand P8 | Ground Floor

London Art Fair 2026

Business Design Centre, 52 Upper Street, London N1 0QH

20-25 January 2026

For immediate release - 1 January 2026

Cavaliero Finn is pleased to announce its participation in London Art Fair 2026, exhibiting within Platform: The Unexpected, a curated showcase selected and led by art historian and author Dr Ferren Gipson. Platform presents galleries whose artists challenge assumptions around material, process, and meaning, offering work that rewards close attention and sustained looking.

At Stand P8, Cavaliero Finn will present new work by Alice Foxen, Isabel Fletcher, Ikuko Iwamoto, Richard McVetis, and Sun Kim, bringing together textile, ceramic, and sculptural practices that foreground material intelligence, labour, and transformation.

Commenting on Cavaliero Finn's selection, Dr Ferren Gipson said:

"I'm so excited about all the artists they're presenting - in particular Alice Foxen, Richard McVetis, and Isabel Fletcher who are each exploring process and medium in distinct and fascinating ways. What I love about Fletcher's featured piece Satin Overlap is how it uses material to carry a story. She has taken offcuts from ballerina shoes, which immediately raises questions: who might be wearing the finished shoes now? Are they being danced across a stage? And what would usually happen to these leftover fragments of satin? By transforming them into an artwork, Fletcher gives new life to what might otherwise be discarded. Beyond the narrative, the piece is aesthetically striking. Each cut-out creates a small window, and the delicate stitching between some areas draws the viewer in for a closer look. Works like this set the tone for Platform 2026: they invite us to think about craftsmanship, sustainability, labour, and materiality, while also being deeply beautiful objects in their own right."

ARTIST HIGHLIGHTS

Isabel Fletcher

Satin Overlap series

The central textile work on the stand is Satin Overlap, developed through a collaboration with Freed of London, the renowned ballet and theatrical shoe manufacturer. Fletcher sourced satin offcuts from the pattern-cutting floor-materials bearing the absent traces of shoes moulded to dancers' feet. What would ordinarily be waste is reconfigured into a suspended textile sculpture through layering, piercing, stitching, draping, and gathering.

Negative space is accentuated using blue, red, and yellow threads referencing the industrial markings of the Freed workshop. When installed, the satin surface reflects light softly, while layered forms cast shifting shadows, prompting reflection on material value, labour, and consumption.

Isabel Fletcher lives and works in London. She completed an MA in Textiles (Mixed Media) at the Royal College of Art in 2023, where she was taught by fellow exhibitor Richard McVetis. Her work has been exhibited at the Design Museum, the Art Workers' Guild, and Salts Mill, West Yorkshire.

Ikuko Iwamoto

Ghosts from the Sea series

One of Cavaliero Finn's longest-represented artists, Ikuko Iwamoto presents work from her Ghosts from the Sea series. Raised near the sea in Japan, Iwamoto's practice reflects a deep concern for marine ecosystems and the destructive impact of modern fishing practices.

Her sculptures combine spiky porcelain fish forms with antique Japanese wooden objects such as print drawers, dough trays, stools, ladders, and chopping boards, creating a quiet tension between fragility and endurance, past and future. In Japanese culture, particularly within Ainu traditions, salmon symbolises sustenance, perseverance, and spiritual connection. Here, the fish appear as spectral presences.

Iwamoto explains:

"These fish are the ghosts of the sea-those whose habitats have been destroyed by practices such as bottom trawling, those discarded as by-catch, and those lost to plastic pollution."

Trained initially under ceramic master Asuka Tsuboi in Japan, Iwamoto later studied at Camberwell and the Royal College of Art, completing her MA in Ceramic & Glass in 2006. Her work is held in the permanent collections of the V&A and Manchester Art Gallery.

Recent accolades include:

- Winner, Young Masters Maylis Grand Ceramics Prize (2019)

- Wakayama Artist Prize (2023)

- Selected for Homo Faber: The Journey of Life, Venice (2024)

- Triennale of Kogei, Kanazawa (2025)

- QEST Andrew & Jane Winch Scholarship (2025)

Richard McVetis

Orbit series

Developed over the past five years, Richard McVetis's Orbit series reflects an ongoing fascination with outer space, time, and human perception. Using what he describes as "rendering with stitch," McVetis constructs works that sit between drawing, textile, and sculpture.

Sparse stitches punctuate dense wool surfaces like distant points of light, evoking planetary forms and imagined timescapes. Repetition, slowness, and physical labour are integral to the work, offering moments of stillness and attention within an increasingly accelerated world.

Born in South Africa in 1983, McVetis lives and works in London and is currently Interim Co-Head of Textiles at the Royal College of Art. His work has been widely exhibited internationally, including at Kettle's Yard, Arnolfini, the Design Museum, and the British Textile Biennial. Recent awards include Bronze at Cheongju Craft Biennale (2025) and a Cove Park Residency (2025/26).

Alice Foxen

Soft Pillow Series

Alice Foxen's ceramic sculptures originate from encounters with discarded domestic objects found on London's streets. Once-soft materials-foam, fabric, padding-are translated into fired clay, preserving creases, slumps, and folds. The work holds a tension between fragility and permanence, presence and absence.

Through slow, layered processes, Foxen seeks to capture the immediacy of these chance encounters, imbuing the objects with quiet humour and pathos.

Ashley Thorpe, author and collector of contemporary ceramics, writes:

"Alice's work is both stark and emotional. There is a dual presence and absence in her work……. The crinkles seem fluid, almost like the ripples of water, but they are caught in fired earthenware. The brittleness and softness reveal the states of the clay in its making.  In other words, ceramic is the perfect medium for this work.  It is a celebration of its own material expressiveness."

Foxen completed her MA at the Royal College of Art in 2022. Her work has been shown widely in the UK and internationally, including the European Ceramic Context Triennial (Bornholm) and British Ceramics Biennial. She has received numerous awards and residencies, including the Windgate Fellowship at Vermont Studio Center.

Sun Kim

Folded Vessel Series

Cavaliero Finn will present a series of folded and geometric ceramic vessels by Sun Kim. Though wheel-thrown, the works are cut, reassembled, and refined into sculptural forms that recall origami and architectural planes. Subtle punctures animate the surface, while restrained colour palettes and rhythmic groupings create a sense of quiet harmony.

Kim's intuitive responsiveness to clay, technical mastery, and playfulness result in vessels that feel soft and textile-like, resonating naturally with the surrounding works on the stand.

Born in Korea and raised in Saudi Arabia and Brazil, Kim trained in São Paulo before further study at Alfred University, New York. She moved to London in 2004 and continues to work as an assistant to Edmund de Waal. Her work is held in public collections including Mashiko Museum of Ceramic Art (Japan) and the Ulster Museum.

Writing in Ceramic Review 2007, Edmund de Waal noted:

"[her work is] poised and confident, hovering on the edge of post-modern quotation without being over self-conscious. When I handled her work, it became clear that this was a potter who was preternaturally skilful in both throwing and assembling, and also someone with a passionate determination to make vessels."

 ENDS