Echo Echo Studios was privileged to be the host of “Strata”, Sashka Sheils’ first major solo exhibition of paintings in Autumn 2017. Her work is remarkably visceral and layered and I think her deep interest in movement shows in its dynamic and passionate quality. The work is only abstract in the sense that it is not figurative or descriptive. That term fails completely to address the way that each painting is so full of its own nature that it stops being about something or pointing at something and rather just becomes a concrete “thing” in itself, with its own compositional integrity. It feels a bit like each work is a living organism. Some works are lighter and some heavier in their feel, and this means that as well as having a powerful existence as individual works they hang together very beautifully to create an overall landscape of a selection of different ecosystems existing alongside each other in what feels like must be a vast continent, most of which remains invisible.

We are very happy to be able to look after one of the artist’s paintings, COMPLETE, which is hung on the wall in the reception area of the studio. The work is dedicated to the co-founder of Echo Echo Dance Theatre Company, Ursula Laeubli, who died in 2011.