Not A Threat, A Promise

10.07.25 - 02.08.25

Shipton is pleased to present the group exhibition, Not A Threat, A Promise, featuring works by Anna-Lena Krause, Jessica Luostarinen & Kit Reynolds. 

Get Ready With Me To Become A Martyr
Text by Olivia Allen

No alarm, but time is a construct, especially when you’re about to get your head chopped off. The best I can do is bang my head against the pillow a few times and hope for the best. Luckily, someone’s on my side and I’m up and at them before they can string a noose around my neck or tie the ropes around my wrists. Let the daylight in, I’m saving the diving intervention for later. 

Eyes open and out of bed (or whatever we’re calling this wooden plank I’ve been resting my weary head on). Time to seize the day, carpe diem and all that, a public execution never got in the way of a good get-ready with me. Time for affirmations. Who do I want to be today? How can I align with my truth? What can I bring to the world? And how long does it take to go up in flames? 

Minimal make-up for today. The restrictive diet has really made my skin glow, and it would be such a waste, streaky is never a good look, and nothing on offer is particularly heat-safe. Now.. what to wear. What do I want my final fit to say? Material matters; cotton feels far too flammable. I need something to buy me a bit of time, give the people a show. They’ve come a long way, taken the day off, and a bit of theatre is only what they deserve. 

Layers are key. Building up the silhouette like kindling, letting the fire work its way in. Snaking and singing as it goes. Let it wind from fabric to fabric, spitting, licking, slowly toasting, a slow and smoky spectacle. If I’m going down - or technically up - let’s make it a group effort, a shared experience. Let my clothes and skin crisp together and the smoke seep into their clothes, sting their streaming eyes and lodge itself in the fibres. 

Silk is out. Too symbolic, and that whole martyr in a silk dress thing has been done to death (pun intended). Probably better suited to drowning, succumbing to the soupy, saturated water, rather than going up with a firework. 

What about armour? Maybe a little on the nose, and heavy. Probably a shortcut to boiling alive. But a nice image all the same - Not subtle, but neither is being burnt at the stake. Let my insides liquefy while the metal tarnishes. Let it ooze out through the arm holes while they all watch. Over the head with a satisfying clunk, cold metal on cold skin. 

Time for shoes, something sensible. I think briefly about going barefoot, but nobody wants to die with their toes on show.  

A knock on the door. Showtime!  

—

Anna-Lena Krause (b. 1994, Germany) is a London-based artist working across sculpture, performance, and moving image. Her practice draws on psychology, phenomenology and lived experience to explore how we connect—physically, digitally and emotionally—in a world where human experience remains embodied, even as we increasingly move through intangible spaces. Bridging sculptural forms with digital tools such as 3D scanning and AI, she creates layered environments where virtual and physical bodies intersect. Her works often begin at the edges of the self, where memory falters and perception slips, inviting viewers into spaces that question what it means to be embodied, present or remembered. Krause’s research-led approach is grounded in personal experience, particularly the intimate ruptures of care, loss and change. She is interested in how intersubjectivity is felt as much as thought, how we carry others within us, how perception is always shared, and how digital systems might mirror, distort or deepen that entanglement.

Jessica Luostarinen (b. 1993, Finland) is a self-taught painter based in London (UK) working in oil. Her emotionally charged paintings explore how identity is shaped, staged, and shielded through quiet gestures and symbolic form. Working with a restrained, often monochromatic palette, Luostarinen creates interconnected series that reflect on themes of protection, transformation, and social performance. Her imagery draws from a range of sources, film stills, costume fittings, historical iconography, and everyday rituals, selected as much for their emotional resonance as for their formal qualities. Recurring motifs appear across her work, shifting subtly in tone and composition to reflect evolving internal states. Through repetition and delicate variation, her paintings unfold slowly, inviting the viewer into a contemplative space where surface and meaning gently blur.

Kit Reynolds (b. 2000, England) is a British artist based in London. Preoccupied with questions of social history, his paintings explore themes desire, consumption and the tangled legacies of industrialism and empire. Taking cue from material found across archives and social media, Reynolds probes images for their cultural signification, exploring the tensions between the banal and the historic, gravity and humour. By examining cultures of consumption and the mechanisms of desire that inform them, Reynolds aims to draw out and reevaluate the factors that inform national and personal identities.