FPS@XYZ | 9-19 July 2025

XYZ Gallery | Grays Inn Road, London, WC1X 8PH

This latest exhibition by Free Painters and Sculptors (FPS) brings together a vibrant collection of work from artists within our organisation—each united by a desire to extend their artistic practice and to exhibit alongside a community of inclusive, active, and creatively ambitious peers.

While this exhibition does not follow a single unifying theme, what connects the work on display is a shared commitment to exploration, dialogue, and the values at the heart of FPS: freedom of expression, openness to experimentation, and mutual support. Here, abstraction meets figuration, tradition meets innovation, and individual practice finds strength within a collective context.

Founded in 1952 by artists associated with the ICA, FPS emerged in post-war Britain with a radical belief in artistic autonomy. Originally known as the Painters Group from the ICA, FPS welcomed artists with a ‘modern approach’—those working in both abstract and figurative modes—at a time when breaking from rigid, academic conventions was both bold and necessary. The group quickly became a vital force in the British art scene, playing a significant role in the establishment of abstract art during the 1950s and ’60s. Key founding members such as Roy Rasmussen, Lyall Watson, and Maurice Jadot helped define this legacy and are now represented in the permanent Tate Collection.

Today, FPS remains an established, artist-led organisation, based in London and exhibiting regularly across the capital and the South East. Our evolving membership of painters, sculptors, printmakers and photographers represents a broad spectrum of contemporary practice and career stages. Through initiatives such as our Monthly Artist Exchange sessions—informal Zoom-based gatherings where members share updates, present work, and connect in a supportive environment—we continue to foster a culture of artistic generosity, critical thinking, and creative growth.

This exhibition reflects what FPS does best: providing a platform for artists to show work on their own terms, in the company of other equally committed artists. We are proud to present this latest snapshot of our community—diverse in medium and message, yet united in its spirit of freedom.

There is no room for emotions here. 19 June - 1st July 2021

POSK Gallery, London.

The quest to answer questions made capturing life and time through images an obsession. Memory would no longer be left to the mind alone. Yusuf’s present work is a collection of collages which started to answer his original questions. These are images of anti-war protests, festival crowds, the reflection of the sea, the glass on a window, the rim of a coffee cup, the edge of a pavement, the exposed limb of a homeless person in winter – all juxtaposed and painted over like our everyday realities, which we sometimes accept as truths, often deny, but mostly ignore. However, these images remain part of a whole, the narrative of our collective consciousness driven by fear, hope, despair, and love. Here our history is solidified and says we all belong, whether we like it or not.

LOCKDOWNS - Against the Odds. 17 May - June 2021

POSK Gallery, London.

Artists: Joanna Ciechanowska, Yusuf Elsaadi, Gosia Łapsa-Malawska.

Nobody could really imagine it, let alone predict it. Everybody thought it would just pass. And then, it all went wrong. Even now, it’s hard to see the light. Some say, ’you are lucky, at least you have something to do, you can paint’. Except that it is not really about ’having something to do’. I walk, paint, sleep, paint, eat, paint, wash, paint, talk, paint, watch, paint, think, paint… Can’t help it. It had always been like that, so what’s so different now?. Ciechanowska Joanna 2021.