Joe Grieve presents four paintings from his Hope series in the inaugural exhibition at The Cove, Upsilon Gallery's new project space in Mayfair.
Upsilon Gallery has inaugurated The Cove, a project space on the lower ground floor of its gallery at 64 Grosvenor Street, Mayfair. Running in parallel with the main exhibition programme, The Cove is dedicated to focused presentations by emerging artists and curators, and to projects that sit outside the conventional format of a full-scale exhibition. The initiative extends the gallery's commitment to emerging practice and to exchange between artists, curators and audiences in London. The opening exhibition, on view from 17 October 2026 to 16 January 2027, presents work by Joe Grieve, Oliver Eglin and Jingyi Li.
Grieve was the inaugural artist in residence at Colstoun Arts, and has worked closely with the programme in the five years since. A number of his works are held in the Colstoun Arts collection. The exhibition at The Cove marks a significant point in his trajectory, placing his work within an international gallery programme for the first time.
Four paintings by former resident and collection artist Joe Grieve at Upsilon Gallery’s exhibition “The Cove” - Image by Tom Carter, Courtesy of Upsilon Gallery
The Hope series
Joe Grieve’s practice moves between abstracted landscape and pure abstraction, grounded in a sustained engagement with the natural world. That engagement took definite form during his residency at Colstoun House in East Lothian, where he worked within the landscape rather than from it. In the nearly five years since, his range has widened, while each canvas has become more recognisably his own.
Grieve works in series, with numerous paintings in progress in the studio at once. He builds surfaces slowly, in successive layers of oil paint. Many of the strokes beneath the finished composition are no longer visible and survive only as texture. Some works carry more than a dozen layers. Others are resolved in one or two, with the grain of the support still legible beneath the paint.
The four paintings shown in The Cove at Upsilon Gallery belong to the Hope series, made over a year of introspection. Each measures 30 x 30 cm and rewards close, unhurried looking. The landscapes from which they derive are left unnamed.
In Ignite (2026), a coil of orange, gold and yellow tightens into a vortex against a crimson ground. A dark ridge rises below, and strokes flare upward from the centre. The outer passages are crusted to an almost mineral texture. Still Burning (2026) extends this register across the whole picture plane: fan-shaped strokes of orange, pink and mauve, flecked with violet and yellow, circle a centre that never resolves. In Current Carries Me (2026), diagonal currents of white and pale blue run between thickly encrusted bands of green, threaded with fine lines of rose and terracotta. The artist describes it as “trusting the current instead of fighting it.” It Got Lighter (2026) is the only work in the group with a horizon. A clear sky sits above a dense mass of white, ochre and green, drawn through with indigo lines that suggest branches or blossom.
Across the series, the palette cools from saturated red to open blue, and the surfaces thin in step with it. The sky of It Got Lighter is painted thinly enough for the weave of the surface to show through.
The paintings hang in a single line across a deep blue wall, in no fixed order. The blue deepens the warmth of the reds and oranges and gives the cooler works a particular clarity.
Hope sits between the more clearly defined landscapes of Grieve’s earlier work and the more open spaces he has increasingly pursued. Both modes are present throughout: the ridge beneath the vortex of Ignite, the currents of Current Carries Me that read equally as water, field or gesture, and the trees of It Got Lighter dissolving into mark.
Two paintings by Joe Grieve (L) Current Carries Me (R) Ignite - Image by Tom Carter, Courtesy of Upsilon Gallery
Surface and scale
Each work measures approximately 30 centimetres square, a format matched to the proportions of The Cove and one that asks for close viewing. Grieve builds oil, ink and acrylic into dense, granular surfaces with a pronounced physical presence. Two works are on canvas and two on hessian. The canvas supports passages of sculpted impasto, while the open weave of the hessian registers through the paint, most visibly in It Got Lighter.
The command of scale Grieve developed at Colstoun is evident here in reverse. Each composition holds the weight of landscape within a compact format, without reduction in density or ambition.
The series implies a sequence, but each painting stands independently, and the reading of each is left open to the viewer.
Two paintings by Joe Grieve (L) Still Burning (R) It got lighter - Image by Tom Carter, Courtesy of Upsilon Gallery
Enquiries
The Cove Joe Grieve, Oliver Eglin and Jingyi Li 17 October 2026 to 16 January 2027 Upsilon Gallery, 64 Grosvenor Street, London W1K 3JH
For viewing appointments and enquiries regarding the work of Joe Grieve, please contact Upsilon Gallery at london@upsilongallery.com.
Images by Tom Carter, Courtesy of Upsilon Gallery
