Scene Study
Shir Cohen, Gosia Kołdraszewska


18 Jan - 8 Feb
PV: 18 Jan 6-9pm
exhibition open Wed-Sat 11-6 or by appointment





Scene Study is a duo exhibition by Shir Cohen and Gosia Kołdraszewska visualising tropes in Israeli state propaganda and exploring collective memory and use of trauma.  

The artists’ backgrounds, being respectively Israeli and Polish, become a crucial point of reference for the presented works. Growing up in two cultures ingrained with the trauma of the Holocaust, Shir Cohen and Gosia Kołdraszewska examine its representation and use in social media which, amid lack of impartial media coverage, has become a crucial source of alternative information on the ongoing genocide of Palestinian people. Gosia presents a series of screen-prints ‘Selfie Macht Frei’ (2024-25), drawing parallels between tourists taking selfies at Auschwitz concentration camp and Israeli soldiers taking selfies in Gaza, while Shir shows painting and embroidery from the ‘Hasbara Series (Chickens for KFC)’ (2024), using tropes of Israeli Zionism and its propaganda. 

What the artists find on social media can be described, borrowing from Milan Kundera’s Soviet propaganda critique, as totalitarian kitsch. A manipulation weaponising collective memory and shared trauma, where the images created are meant to represent an ideal – here offered as the only solution to the trauma – and where any question or doubt cast is an infringement on that ideal and betrayal to one and undividable collective identity. 

Both Shir and Gosia in their work cast the doubt, often using dreadful irony to expose the kitsch. The images they form in response recontextualise the found propagandist imagery, and propose an alternative way of dealing with those traumas – one of nuance and solidarity with the oppressed. 

The exhibition will be raising funds for a charity chosen by the artists. 


Selfie Macht Frei V, Gosia Kołdraszewska, 2024, four-layer screen-print, 25*20cm, edition of 4+2AP
Selfie Macht Frei VI, Gosia Kołdraszewska, 2024, four-layer screen-print, 25*20cm, edition of 4+2AP
Selfie Macht Frei I, Gosia Kołdraszewska, 2024, four-layer screen-print, 40*50cm, edition of 4+2AP
Selfie Macht Frei II, Gosia Kołdraszewska, 2024, four-layer screen-print, 40*50cm, edition of 4+2AP
Selfie Macht Frei III, Gosia Kołdraszewska, 2024, four-layer screen-print, 40*50cm, edition of 4+2AP
Selfie Macht Frei IV, Gosia Kołdraszewska, 2024, four-layer screen-print, 40*50cm, edition of 4+2AP
detail of: Selfie Macht Frei VI, Gosia Kołdraszewska, 2024
detail of: Selfie Macht Frei III, Gosia Kołdraszewska, 2024
World Domination (A), Shir Cohen, 2024, embroidery, 53*57cm
World Domination (B), Shir Cohen, 2024, embroidery, 55*55cm
Miscarriage, Shir Cohen, 2024, oil on polycotton, 122*121cm
Cease Fire, Shir Cohen, 2024, oil on polycotton, 122*123cm
Lionesses,  Shir Cohen, 2024, oil on polycotton, 122*122cm
Catgirl, Shir Cohen, 2024, oil on polycotton, 121*122cm
Influencer Tour, Shir Cohen, 2024, oil on polycotton, 245*145cm
detail of: Besties, Shir Cohen, 2024, oil on cardboard









fantasising about wild horses
Lily Bunney


15 November - 14 December 2024
PV: 14 Nov 6-9pm
miłość gallery

29 Downham Road, N1 5AA
Wed-Sat 11-6




‘Fantasising about wild horses’ is the sequel to ‘girls peeing on cars’, Lily Bunney’s solo exhibition hosted at Guts Gallery and curated by miłość. This second part brings the theme of friendship to a more abstract, introspective, parasocial level. With the artist showing her own photographs alongside found imagery of Julia Fox and Jennette McCurdy, ‘Fantasising about wild horses’ observes imagined friendship and intimacy.

Celebrities act as touchstones of common experiences between certain groups of people in the same way pissing behind a car does. -- Lily Bunney



The exhibition’s title is inspired by a scene from Clarice Lispector’s novel The Besieged City, a dream of wild horses roaming a city that’s soon to be modernised, “their manes bristling; rhythmic, uncultured” (2019). Lispector writes about beauty and vanity, the desire to become a tamed object. Lily looks into this tension of losing subjectivity, losing wildness, as we adapt to a culture of patriarchy and capitalism, and girlhood and friendship become commodities.

And as the world imposes a culture of shame upon the queer, it gets isolating and lonely. Celebrity memoirs – Fox’s Down the Drain and McCurdy’s I’m Glad My Mom Died – recount trauma, offering a sense of false intimacy to those craving a connection. Millions become friends with Julia and Jennette, empathising with their tender and honest stories – commodification of communion fabricates parasocial friendships.

Lily presents large-scale paintings of Julia Fox and Jennette McCurdy, almost randomly morphing them into objects from images found on social media. With a cat for a crotch, or the legs of a barbie doll on a rocking horse, Lily fills in the blanks, making the celebrities half subjects, half objects. Around them are scenes of friendship, paintings made from photographs – finger hearts, a walk from a music festival, painting your girlfriend’s toenails – in a genuine offer of friendship dedicated to Julia and Jennette.

Following ‘girls peeing on cars’, utilising that same click-bait appeal, this show takes friendship from a very bodily and literal to a parasocial level, which becomes much more introspective and ambiguous. Similarly to the celebrity memoirs, Lily reclaims the narrative of this parasocial behaviour, presenting it as inspiration for reflection and reframing conventionalised shame.



Read Lily Bunney’s exhibition essay. 

Request the catalogue.


<3, Lily Bunney, 2024
Angel Wings, Hip Kisses, Lily Bunney, 2024
Cat, Lily Bunney, 2024
Jennette McCurdy, Lily Bunney, 2023
Julia Fox (Lady Godiva), Lily Bunney, 2024
Nails, Lily Bunney, 2024
Sunrise, Lily Bunney, 2024
Sunset, Lily Bunney, 2024


girls peeing on cars 
Lily Bunney 


25 October -- 19 November 2024
GUTS GALLERY x miłość
Guts Gallery, Unit 2 Sidings House, 10 Andre Street, E8 2AA
PV: 25 Oct 6-8pm



Guts Gallery and miłość present the first solo exhibition by British artist Lily Bunney, girls peeing on cars. It is the first of two presentations of Lily Bunney’s work as a collaboration between the galleries, with the second part to open at miłość in November. 

Girls peeing on cars is an expression of reverence for friendship, with the exhibition being an homage not just to the concepts of closeness, communion, mutual support and celebration, but also to Lily’s actual friends. Lily speaks of narrating her life through friendship, with her adulthood being an exploration of comfort evolving from close personal relationships. 



exhibition text: ‘On girls peeing on cars’

Lily and I met doing a temp job a year ago. We were sat in the ual offices for eight hours each day with very little to do, and so we talked. We gossiped about the art world, Lily saying she wanted to be a successful artist, me saying I’d like to open a gallery. We drank black coffee and talked about books, Lily told me about being a maths teacher and how reading Sadie Plant influenced her technique, and showed me around her home town on google maps, and explained what woolworths was. I met Lily’s friends, who also worked temp jobs at ual, we talked about their feelings and concerns, Lily met my friends, we talked about their feelings and concerns, we talked about dating, about how our relationship with ourselves is reflected through our relationships with others. Lily showed me her work and her new tattoo, and told me she was planning another tattoo – a lower back one which said ‘when I count my blessings, I count my friends’.

We talked about books a lot and read a lot during our uneventful workdays. We exchanged books, including Mohsin Hamid’s ‘Reluctant Fundamentalist’, which Lily bought during lunch in the boat bookshop on the canal, and Julia Fox’s memoir ‘Down the Drain’ which had just come out at that time. I got it from my partner’s parents for Christmas, but had already read it at that point. I gave it to Lily and she read it in a day. Our then manager, and now dear friend, Amrita has my copy of ‘Down the Drain’ now. Lily and I spoke about Julia Fox a lot, about reclaiming feelings of shame, re-contextualising them, owning up and taking control of stories that others might be sharing behind your back. We talked about how liberating it felt to read it and how close it felt to what Lily was thinking about when creating the ‘girls peeing on cars’ series. 

We hosted a birthday party and what was a soft launch of the gallery in my flat in Finsbury Park and put up one of the pieces from this show, ‘Girls Peeing on Cars #3 (More Peeing)’, alongside the Jennette McCurdy one with a cat crotch, and a series of five soft-core porn images turning into a yawning cat that Hayden had made the frames for by hand. Meow meow. We invited all of our friends, and all of our gay friends came, and they drank Polish wódka my sister brought from Warsaw that morning, and diet coke that Lily likes, and Lily was drawing on Freya’s body with a pink sharpie, and we took flash pictures that Lily then made into gem art pieces. We danced until very late, boobs were flashing, and Hannah made everyone perform her choreography to ‘I’m Still Standing’. The gays took over my disco playlist and put on Lady Gaga, Hannah asked me who Lady Gaga was. We sold the works to our friends, and sang ‘Groove Is in the Heart’, Martha wore this amazing corset and danced with Patryk a lot. And Lily and I had our thongs poking out of our trousers (I would say pants) as a coordinated effort of this shared belated Pisces birthday party during Aries season – the most emotionally immature star sign.

That first show in our flat we called ‘guilt-free’ and talked a lot about shame and guilt, and how it’s inherent to growing up as a girl, and inherent to growing up queer and so many other things. Lily gave me this book to read called ‘I’m a Fan’ by Sheena Patel and I hated it and didn’t want to finish it, and so I complained to Lily, but she said she liked it because she likes unhinged women, and the character is obviously very wrong and deeply flawed, but for people who don’t acknowledge such shame and selfishness it can remove some shame.

Lily talks about her friends so much and always with such admiration. I was her relatively new friend, and she has this university friends group, and they are all beautiful and amazing, and hearing about them was such a pleasure. She told me they went to this restaurant for Martha’s birthday dinner (I’m not very close with Martha but always admire how kind and beautiful she is – and a great dancer), and they all held hands and said what they were grateful for. And Lily said she was grateful for not feeling that lonely anymore. 

During that other party, Lily read us a short story that she wrote, in which someone tells their friend of a night out in a club in London. London can be a very lonely city and it’s nice to find ways of making it less lonely, Lily said to me once. In the story, this person went to the club alone and had to pee, and so they joined this group of girls in the queue, and they said they knew a spot, and they went to this carpark to pee. And they became a part of this random group of friends, and it’s such a relatable interaction and a beautiful act of safekeeping fellow girlies and queers, for whom nightlife (cismen) poses dangers we would like to protect everyone from. An act of finding joy in uniting against oppression. We read Samuel Delany’s ‘Times Square Red, Times Square Blue’ and wondered what lesbian cruising could look like. 

When I think of being carefree and tactile, like a lot of Lily’s works, I think about girlhood and sisterhood but with a sense of grief and longing. But Lily told me for her it was an awakening – rather than regaining something that’s lost, she thinks of it as something germinating further. She lives with her friends, and her life – reflected in the friendships – is what you imagine being a grown up is as a kid. Feeling held by people, by a chosen rather than nuclear family.

It made all the sense that Lily’s first show would be about her friends. An image of friendship that’s very physical and tactile, very literal and honest. A documentation of existing friendships providing context and setting the scene for images of a friendship imagined. As Lily moves to her second presentation, it feels like a full circle for me – and for miłość gallery that images of girls peeing in many ways brought to life. She told me reality is in flux but fantasy is forever.


words by Aleksandra Moraś, Oct 2024



Request the catalogue.


View the press release [PDF].

Let’s make miłość
Alicja Biała, Maja Janczar, Gosia Kołdraszewska, Jan Możdżyński, Zofia Pałucha, Patryk Różycki


4 October -- 2 November 2024
miłość gallery
29 Downham Road, N1 5AA
PV: 3 Oct 6-9pm

close up of: Jan Możdżyński, Owner of a Lonely Heart, 2024, oil on canvas, 140*190cm



Let’s make miłość is an introduction to miłość’s programme, an exhibition focused on Polish art that sits in opposition to the status quo and examines the oppression imposed by normativity in the context of Polish and East-Central-European culture. The works, ranging from paintings to etchings and sculpture, explore oppositional experiences – experiences of navigating oppression and liberation, of love, care and compassion. The artists create in the contexts of Polish Christian hetero-patriarchy, while highlighting oppositional histories and re-examining relationships with heritage, nature, home, queerness, and femininity.


Gosia Kołdraszewska’s diptych welcomes you to miłość with a camp image of Poland – its romantic rural landscapes haunted by oppressive tropes, spectres of Catholicism and repressed innuendos. Gosia visualises the borrowed aspirations for pomp and greatness in the aesthetics or rural Poland, stuck in the narrative of vibrant capitalism of the 90s. What she describes as ‘the Polish tendency for nostalgia’ produces plastic iterations of national cultural symbols
– roadside shrines with neon crosses, dubious souvenirs – and mixes them with characters taken from Western pop-culture, covering the landscape with a satirical layer of garish decoration.

Zofia Pałucha’s recent body of work navigates the intersection of personal experience and political commentary through a distinctly digital lens, recontextualising found imagery. In Trafficker’s Friends and Business Partners – a title taken from an article about Jeffrey Epstein – she depicts a group of young sex-workers captured by the police. The painting’s negative rendering speaks to a tradition in art history where women sex-workers were most often depicted by men. This change in perspective, a point of view of compassion rather than domination, highlights the dichotomy of subjectivity and objectivity of the contemporary realities of sex work.

A similar tension is visible in Jan Możdżyński’s paintings and sculpture, which present characters and elements from his creation of the vaginal circus. The circus, traditionally associated with presentations of peculiarities, pretences and curiosities, becomes the home of freaks and queers and (sexual) ambiguity. Jan draws parallels between the female body and the circus, both arenas of strife and battle, both a spectacle. He plays with performativity, with binaries, fear, sex and fetishes, and it remains unclear whether this performance is voluntarily and what our role is as audience.

Patryk Różycki practices a lightness in his representations, contextualising the subject with titles and text. Here, he shows three paintings from a large autobiographical series which delves into his family life, growing up and discovering his sexuality. The works examine three dimensions of queerness and oppositionality – in Talking to My Mother About Sex, Patryk tells the story of rediscovering a friendship with his mother over telling her about his Tinder dates, prompting her to tell him her own stories; My Bum re-examines his relationship with his own body, conditioned by oversexualised masculine beautystandards and peer pressure, while At confession I told the priest that I was masturbating, he was angry with me and shouted at me shows a moment where he was forced to confront how the Church policed, and continues to police, sexual expression. This individual, personal story, of coming to terms with and facing one’s sexuality – at home, at church, and with oneself – becomes a crucial, relatable illustration of an experience of queerness in Poland.

In All About Love, bell hooks writes about the importance of the creation of a home, a space for oneself as a crucial act of self-care, especially for those of us systemically denied care. Maja Janczar explores home-making and care in her new works, which use tea towels as canvas, and in this context, on plates, presents human and non-human symbiotic relationships – love and polyculture. She extends the love ethic towards nature – while hooks speaks of love as the opposite of domination, in Marsh Labrador Tea, Maja shows a plant whose properties were exploited, which now needs to be protected.

In Alicja Biała’s art, this relation to nature is visible both in the subject and the technique, with the artist using mining waste to develop her etchings. Alicja speaks of being raised in the centre of a multi-generational dialogue which informs her practice that delves into cultural pasts, migration and displacements, Slavic identities and folk traditions. Themes of paganism, existing in harmony with nature, bring about a sense of cyclicality and humility which challenges the values historically dominating Europe and its practices of exploitation of nature and extractivism. Playing with clichés, Alicja offers a humorous interpretation of a cultural past that’s both personal and oppositional.




Request the catalogue.

View the press release [PDF].





guilt-free
Lily Bunney


6-22 April 2024
304 Seven Sisters Road, N4 2AG
exhibition open by appointment




The works in the “guilt-free” display mark a beginning of a body of work exploring the idea of morality in girlhood, femininity and trauma.

The title itself acts as the opposite of a disclaimer, opposing the guilt inherent to the girly experience and the subsequent instinct to apologise, disclaim, cover oneself with the benefit of the doubt. In an interview promoting her book Down the Drain, Julia Fox speaks of the feminine urge to start sentences with “I think” or “I feel” – in a performance of naivete, we emphasise that the feminine perception is gullible rather than stating the obvious. 

When we acknowledge something is guilt-free, we also acknowledge guilt exists in that space. As a marketing cliché, it aims to inflict shame and offer an alternative, co-opting empowerment, encouraging us to take control over actions of which we are expected to feel guilty. Lily’s work promotes this socially constructed moral deviance. 

More Girls Peeing Outside on Cars is the third painting in the Girls Peeing on Cars series which spans large-scale pointillist paintings and short stories. The series looks into navigating urban space and community-building acts between women and queers, especially in the context of nightlife and its threats. The act of peeing publicly defiles, desecrates the sanitised, gentrified space, while exposing oneself and the private requires a community shield. The girlies form a circle as a warm stream of piss covers the shiny cars and we laugh in necessity and profanity. 

The everyone is beautiful, no one is horny pentaptych extrapolates the feeling of shame and exposure from Girls Peeing on Cars, carrying it into the digital to examine further acts of naughtiness and the grotesque. Inspired by an exploration of body horror and transfiguration, Lily paints a soft-core porn close-up frame depicting an act of domination and transforms into a yawning cat – its silly little innocent face concealing the profane. 

For the last piece of the display, Lily looks to Jennette McCurdy and her recently published memoir I’m Glad My Mom Died, delving into the consumption of celebrity trauma online. Composed of two separate pieces of canvas joined, the painting combines the torso of the writer with an image of a cat as her crotch.



Request the catalogue.