BIOGraphy
Alla Samarina is a London-based artist working across painting, collage and drawing.
Born in Saint Petersburg, her early creative life unfolded within the city’s experimental cultural scene, including the New Academy movement, Pop Mechanika and the pop group Kolibri. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, she relocated to London, where she became immersed in the creative worlds surrounding Philip Treacy and Isabella Blow, contributing ideas and collaborations across editorial and image-making projects.
Drawing on experiences that span underground culture, fashion and contemporary art, her practice explores fragmentation, memory and transformation. Through processes of layering, interruption and reduction, she creates works that move between figuration and abstraction, allowing images to emerge, dissolve and reconfigure over time.
ARTISTS STATEMENT
My work explores the space between appearance and disappearance, structure and instability.
Working across painting, drawing and collage, I build images through a process of layering, obscuring, removing and rediscovering. Rather than beginning with a fixed narrative, I follow relationships between forms, materials and gestures, allowing the work to develop through intuition and revision.
I am interested in fragmentation as a way of holding multiple possibilities at once. Figures emerge, dissolve and reappear; marks function both as description and interruption. The work often hovers between figuration and abstraction, resisting certainty while remaining grounded in bodily experience.
What interests me most is not resolution but tension — the moment when an image feels simultaneously familiar and unknown, present and incomplete.
SOLO EXHIBITIONS:
2020 - ‘Elements Of Life’ Solo exhibition, Muse Gallery, London
GROUP EXHIBITIONS:
2026 - “Artist at Home” Annual exhibition, London
2026 - Barnes Easter Art Fair, London
2025 - “Artist at Home” Annual exhibition, London
2024 - “Figuratively Speaking” Maximillian Wolfgang Gallery, London
2024 - Jumblebee Christmas Charity Auction, London
2024 - “Art on Postcard” AAH Charity Auction, Arthur’s Coffee House, London
2024 - “Blossom'“ Cicek Gallery, Hackney Downs Studios, London
2024 - ‘Artists at Home’ group show, Chiswick Cinema, London
2024 - ‘Artists at Home’ group show, Post Room Cafe, London
2024 - “Easter Art Fair” Barnes, London
2024 - “Artist At Home” Annual exhibition, London
2023 - “Christmas Exhibition” Hogarth Health Club, London
2023 - “All Great Ideas Start In A Garage” Cicek Gallery, London
2023 - “Art Fair” Cicek Gallery, London
2023 - ‘Artists At Home’ Annual exhibition, London
2023 - “Last Minute” Cicek Gallery, London
2022 - “Politics Of Charm” Cicek Gallery, London
2022 - ‘Artists At Home’ Annual exhibition, London
2021 - ‘Artists At Home’ Annual exhibition, London
2020 - ‘Artists At Home’ Annual exhibition, London
2019 - “Christmas Exhibition” Hogarth Health Club, London
2019 - ‘Artists At Home’ Annual exhibition, London
2018 - “Christmas Exhibition” Hogarth Health Club, London
2018 - ‘Artists At Home’ Annual exhibition, London
2017 - “Christmas Exhibition” Hogart Health Club, London
2017 - ‘Artists At Home’ Annual exhibition, London
2017 - “Annual Exhibition” Royal Institute of Oil Painters, Mall Galleries, London
2016 - “Christmas Exhibition’” Hogarth Health Club, London
2016 - “Annual Exhibition” Chelsea Art Society, London
2016 - “Affordable Art Fair”at St Peter's Church Kensington, London
2015 - “Affordable Art Fair” at St Peter's Church Kensington, London
2014 - “The female form” Charles Dagette Gallery, London