Edge States – Anuschka Barlas, Grace Crabtree, Rosina Godwin, Lezanne Scott and Hannah Wroe

A group exhibition by five UK-based artists, showcasing diverse approaches to depicting landscape, memory and place, inspired by travels to Cyprus and beyond.

The starting point for the exhibition was a shared experience at the Cyprus College of Art in Lempa, Paphos, where fellow artists Anuschka Barlas, Grace Crabtree, Rosina Godwin and Hannah Wroe met while on residency. Located in the hills near the ruins of an ancient Neolithic settlement and overlooking the Mediterranean Sea, the college, its beautiful surroundings, and the valuable connections forged during this period had a lasting impact. Together with Lezanne Scott, whose work shares similar themes, the artists have produced a series of works exploring approaches to landscape and place, with impressions from Cyprus weaving a connective thread.

Places become embedded with the emotion we associate with particular events, and to revisit the memory of a place is to recover those emotions. As writer Rebecca Solnit eloquently puts it:

“… place, which is always spoken of as though it only counts when you’re present, possesses you in its absence, takes on another life as a sense of place, a summoning in the imagination with all the atmospheric effect and association of a powerful emotion. The places inside us matter as much as the ones outside.”

All of the participating artists have thought about their relationship to place and landscape – both physical and psychic – in different ways, creating works that exist in the hinterland between experience and memory: the gap between recollections and imaginings of places, and how they are. The diversity of media used, including drawing, collage, egg tempera, handwoven tapestry, knitting and watercolours underlines the significance of materiality as well as more conceptual concerns when echoing the authentic distortion and hazy uncertainty that characterises remembered places.

Anuschka Barlas is a Scotland-based artist whose work engages with themes of memory, place and transience. Drawing variably with charcoal, graphite, ink, oil paint and watercolour on paper and weaving with natural and synthetic fibres on a handloom, her practice probes the foundations of traditional drawing and painting, and its relationship with other art forms. Studies from observation and/or film and photographs fuse with unpremeditated forms conjured spontaneously on the surface or warp into dreamlike landscapes and figures woven into and from their surroundings. Anuschka holds a BA (Hons) in Painting & Printmaking from the Glasgow School of Art (2022). Recent exhibitions include the Royal Watercolour Society (RWS) Open at Bankside Gallery, London (2024), They Had Four Years at Generator Projects, Dundee (2023), and Human Perspectives at Cambridge University (2021). Anuschka has attended residencies at the Cyprus College of Art in Paphos in 2022 and 2024. As well as exhibiting in the UK and internationally, she teaches regularly and is co-founder and tutor at The Paper Stage, an artist-run platform celebrating figurative drawing and painting, through life drawing classes, workshops and exhibitions.

Grace Crabtree is an artist based in Bridport, West Dorset. Her paintings, often using the ancient techniques of egg tempera and fresco, are grounded in the experience of walking or swimming through a place – drawing in particular from the coastal terrains of Dorset and Cyprus – and unearthing their folkloric, geological, and mythic narratives. Since graduating from the Ruskin School of Art in 2019, Grace has exhibited across the UK. Her debut solo show, Elemental Drift, was held at Bridport Arts Centre in 2024 following an Arts Council England DYCP grant for ‘The Art of Fresco’, a studio and research project (2022-23). She has attended artist residencies in France, Portugal, and Cyprus, and is currently enrolled on the Turps Correspondence Course.

Rosina Godwin is a London based sculptor, whose artwork disrupts the nurturing associations of textiles to explore feminist issues. She has a Postgraduate Certificate in Art (Cyprus College of Art) and a MA in Fine Art (University of Reading), and has exhibited across the UK and Europe, given talks at conferences and run a variety of experimental knitting and textile workshops, including Darn for Yarn (Queen Elizabeth Stadium), Creature Dis-Comforts (Whitechapel Gallery) and Feminist Knitting (Greenbelt Festival).

Lezanne Scott is a self-taught artist from South Africa, now based in Edinburgh, Scotland. Her work explores the connection between human experience and place. Using a variety of mediums, including watercolours, oils, and mixed media on paper and panels, Lezanne’s practice shifts fluidly between abstraction and observation, offering a way to express the intangible emotions and sensations tied to memory and landscape. Her background as an occupational therapist and coach has shaped her ability to observe and respond to human fragility and resilience. Through her art, Lezanne continues to examine the boundaries between the seen and the felt, creating work that is both deeply personal and open to interpretation. She attended the Château d’Orquevaux Artists & Writers Residency in France in 2023, and recently exhibited at the Royal Watercolour Society (RWS) Open at the Bankside Gallery, London (2025).

Hannah Wroe is an artist-researcher based in London. She grew up between Manchester, Essex and Cyprus. Her work examines the intersections of plant histories, spirituality, feminisms and silences. She studied Illustration at Camberwell College of Art and Art and Politics at Goldsmiths University of London. She has a growing interest in vexillology, exploring the types of authority and power often communicated through flags and banners and how we might re-examine their use.