Director Emma Richeldis North
“Richeldis Fine Art has established a reputation as a leading platform for the discovery, support and development of international emerging and established artists primarily engaged in themes of minimal abstraction.
In a noisy digital age of instant images and disposable fashions, the works emerging from the studios of the captivating group of painters that RFA represents quietly ask us to slow down and take a step back in order to look forward. Through their enduring commitment to critical investigation and material experimentation the artists have the ability to radically refocus our engagement with the rapidly changing contemporary world. Often employing a delicate combination of reduction and repetition the works remove the pictorial and explore what is left, playfully open up new spaces for reflection and inviting us to stop and think.
For this issue of Emergent, director Emma Richeldis North has brought together a small focused group of such artists each of whom are carving out distinct visual languages which self-consciously and playfully reference the weighty history of painting whilst continuously interrogating new spaces of inquiry emerging on its periphery. From the quivering compositional grids of septuagenarian Spanish painter Joaquim Chancho to the automatist gestures of young Scottish painter Struan Teague, at the core of the collection is a conflicting impulse between accumulation and erasure, a delicate balance between intuitive gesture and deeply considered subject.
Everything is abstracted from something. Many galleries programs and artist rosters are borne out of the sensibilities of the curators who initiate them and this is certainly the case with RFA. Emma comes from a family of academics and archaeologists and these initial influences can be found at the core of RFA’s critical agenda today. Hot summer afternoons spent with her father touring 7th Century monasteries in Northern Spain gave an early appreciation for not only tradition and lived ritual but also perhaps more critically an intrinsic understanding of essential architectural qualities such as the use of light, space and sound. A childhood home filled with culturally and historically diverse material objects ranging from Ancient Egyptian Ushabti to Paleolithic spearheads and Chinese manuscripts initiated a lifelong fascination with the layered cultural journeys of objects and their unsettled relation to each other. Later on, Emma graduated as a student of Art History and Improvisational Jazz Piano and this rare and fascinating convergence of academic research and creative experimentation has also provided a rich ground on which the foundations of RFA have been built.
Emma has an uncanny ability to think laterally across genre, medium and market forces to discover often overlooked minimal artists working with a maturity and clarity of vision rarely found in those other than masters from the art-historical past. It is for this reason collectors, curators and creatives continue return to the gallery as a source for inspiration. For me, RFA can attribute much of its success to Emma’s essential understanding that the contemplative pauses and quiet spaces between marks can make as authoritative a statement as the painterly gestures in themselves.”
richeldis fine art
Richeldis Fine Art is a touring art gallery and consultancy representing leading and emerging contemporary artists with an emphasis on minimal abstract art, alongside key British Modern works.
For almost a decade, alongside hosting an eclectic program of exhibitions throughout the year, Richeldis Fine Art has acted as a consultancy sourcing unique collections for private collectors, designers, developers and public institutional buyers.
SERVICES
Richeldis Fine Art provides a compelling and passionate approach to building art collections globally. Offering an experienced understanding and eye for discovering, sourcing and curating artworks of quality and intrigue.
Ranging from the ancient to conceptual, renowned to undiscovered.
To discuss a project please contact gallery@richeldisfineart.com.
Gallery Director Emma Richeldis North is a History of Art and Improvisational Jazz piano graduate with over a decade of experience curating critically acclaimed profit and non-profit exhibitions, and acting as a consultant for private and public collectors globally. She has been an art consultant for the best part of the last decade, and has curated national and international exhibitions for both profit and non-profit museums and galleries. Emma has also acted as a fine art advisor for a hedge fund and as a consultant for several private investors.
In 2010 Emma Richeldis North and friend Jane McGill founded ‘The Horsebox Gallery’. Considered the first global contemporary touring art gallery & consultancy 'on the move’ with Tatler commenting “Next time you fancy investing in art, don't feel you have to run the gauntlet of over-obsequious gallery owners in the West End. Or auction houses bedazzling you with their machine-gun bidding. Oh no. The world is now a changed place!”. Their aim was to take expert art & consultancy directly to the comfort of collectors homes, offices and at private events. This developed into converting a 26ft horsebox into a touring gallery which took their artist's work on the move.
In 2015 Emma Richeldis North continued the bespoke ethos with a new gallery focussed on minimal abstract and contemporary artists.