Anomie Collections is a London-based initiative that supports the work of contemporary British painters by acquiring works on behalf of a group of private collectors. Since its inception in 2022, Anomie Collections has acquired eighty-six paintings and works on paper by thirteen artists.

This publication, accompanying the second edition of scheme, documents the thirty works purchased for this iteration, along with newly commissioned texts by Kathryn Lloyd and an introduction by Matt Price, Publisher at Anomie Publishing and curator of the edition. The works span a variety of genres, from landscapes and interiors to figures and abstractions.

The artists featured in Anomie Collections 2 are:

Lindsey Bull
Jai Chuhan
Anna Freeman Bentley
Cara Nahaul
Ben Sadler

Through painting, these artists explore the tension between presence and absence, memory and invention. Whether in the guise of portraits, fragmented landscapes or charged interiors, their works navigate spaces that exist between the real and the imagined. The figures that populate Bull’s paintings, for example, can be understood as characters in an unnamed, unknown, play. With their faces often turned away from the viewer or cropped out of frame, they seem aware of being watched while at the same time evading our direct gaze. Much like Bull, Chuhan often depicts the female figure, situating them in room-like spaces. For the artist, these ambiguous yet domestic environments become arenas for exploring themes of love, refuge, home and alienation.

By contrast, Freeman Bentley’s paintings are devoid of the human figure. Through a focus on the built environment, she delves into the psychological and symbolic dimensions of space. Nahaul also turns to the landscape in her practice, creating intuitively rendered scenes that capture the sensation of memory. Composed from photographs, recollection and imagination, her dream-like settings explore displacement, nostalgia, colonial history and the significance of place. In his practice, Sadler uses painting, music, poetry and video to create works that gently probe ideas of observation, solitude and the human experience. The paintings he has created for this collection are all variations on a theme, inspired by a teenage recollection of seeing his mother having a cup of coffee in a café by herself.