Author: Lizzy Vartanian Collier

Lizzy Vartanian Collier aka Gallery Girl is a writer and curator based in London. Her work has been featured in publications including Dazed, Hyperallergic and Vogue Arabia. She was curator of Perpetual Movement during AWAN Festival 2018 and in 2019 had a residency at the Lab at Darat Al Funun in Amman, Jordan. She has also worked with Armenia Art Fair for its inaugural edition and previously worked as an editor at I.B.Tauris Publishers. In 2019 she co-founded Arsheef, Yemen’s first contemporary art gallery. She has given workshops at Manara Culture in Amman, Jordan and Victoria and Albert Museum in London, UK. As of 2020 she is currently in law school, with the ambition of greater understanding the intersection between art and the law.

Chikako Yamashiro @ White Rainbow

March 21, 2018.Reading time 7 minutes.

Japan is famous for its breathtaking nature. Cherry blossoms, mountains, cranes; the image most people of the country is of a serene, gentle place, where everything is delicate and beautiful. In Chikako Yamashiro’s exhibition Shapeshifter at White Rainbow in London the viewer is exposed to the natural side of Japan, but it is not […]

Facing the Enemy @ Palais de Tokyo

March 13, 2018.Reading time 8 minutes.

Two exhibitions at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris are running concurrently that employ huge immersive installations to subvert our ideas on all things moral and political. Across large curated spaces Neil Beloufa’s L’ennemi de mon ennemi and Kader Attia and Jean-Jacques Lebel’s One and Other present the audience with work that will shock, scare […]

Gallery Girl meets Alice Irwin

March 2, 2018.Reading time 9 minutes.

Alice Irwin uses print, etching and sculpture to reference childhood experiences and to create her own creatures and make-believe worlds. As she is about to complete her MA from the Royal College of Art in London, Gallery Girl caught up with her to chat fantasy and inspirations. “It is like you are trying to undo […]

Basma Alsharif @ Mosaic Rooms

February 26, 2018.Reading time 8 minutes.

We are sick with an illness that cannot be cured If only I can alleviate the pain That I have myself created in you A pain that only you can relieve me of So that we will never be free Basma Alsharif’s trio of film installations at the Mosaic Rooms is a delicate and sensual […]

Yto Barrada @ Barbican

February 15, 2018.Reading time 6 minutes.

The Barbican’s Curve Gallery is almost a piece of architectural art in its own right. Its sweeping structure is therefore the perfect space in which to exhibit artwork that comments on structure and form. Yto Barrada’s current show, Agadir, considers how the city and its citizens respond to reinvention – a process that inevitably involves […]