blank is pleased to present When no one else comes, you can summon spirits to keep you company, a solo exhibition by Zoë Paul, her second with the gallery.

This show was supposed to happen three years ago but I had just moved to the Omphalospito on Mount Parnassos where instead I started developing, in seclusion, these primordial figure drawings, summoning the spirits of Delphi, located on the other side of the mountain.

Delphi like many sacred ancient places is regarded as one of the navels of the world, the ομφαλός, ομ meaning raw or crude and φαλλος meaning fallus - is this a primordial lingam? Connecting us to where? To the universe? How can we link this serpentine umbilical cord back into the universe? The navel is a point that connects us with our ancestors through the primordial nourishment of the womb, the eternal lingam needing to be tended and cared for with libations and flowing light.

Lying in a crows nest bed on the top floor of a lower east side tenement building in New York in September, I dreamt of brass being welded together. Red hot irons melting into each other held together with slivers of molten silver and becoming grids. They were made as deep winter gifts for my friend Artemis. In a studio in Cape Town, they grew and became giants. Woven with a mixture of rough hand spun wool from the north of Greece and soft fine Karoo Mohair sourced in Cape Town, I wanted to create vessels that let light flow through them. Weavings are connections with our company: one line cannot exist without the other and the whole is created by many existing in community with each other.  

The house is built around a central courtyard where I planted a pomegranate tree in honour of Persephone. The house found me on the day of all spirits as winter descended and I moved there as the spring broke in the northern hemisphere. The figures are spirits, titans, primordial beings casting light from their bodies. The weavings developed from these.

Based between Athens and Parnassos, Zoë Paul (b.1987) grew up between the island of Kythera in Greece and Oxford in the UK. Her work incorporates the history of ancient art, often utilising the representation of the figure in particular to understand our human bodies in relation to the space and belief system they inhabit. She completed her MA in Sculpture at the Royal College of Art, London in 2012 and has had solo exhibitions in institutions across London, New York, Athens, Brussels, including at MO.CO in Montpellier, France (2024); Zeynep Çinili Hamam in Istanbul (2023); blank projects at No.9 Cork Street, London (2022); the Museum of Modern Art, New York (2019 - 2021); Galerie de Sèvres, Paris (2020); The Intermission, Piraeus (2020); La Loge, Brussels (2019); and Spike Island, Bristol (2018). She has participated in several group shows, including; Shades of Daphne at Kasmin, New York (2023), How Long is Now at Israel Museum, Jerusalem (2021); Recyclage/Surcyclage at Fondation Villa Datris, L’Isle-sur-la-Sorgue (2020); Landlord Colours: On Art, Economy, and Materiality at Cranbrook Art Museum, Detroit, USA (2019) and Infinity Has its Limits at SALTS, Basel (2018).