LONDON ART FAIR 26
Business Design Centre, London N1
Rabley Gallery
Stand 12
20 - 25 January 2026
Natasha Michaels
New Works
A Difficult Woman (Heresy), 2026
A Difficult Woman reinterprets an engraving depicting heresy through the process of monotype. The work is informed by the artist’s interest in how women’s bodies have historically been used to personify ideas considered dangerous, immoral, or disruptive. None more so than the depictions of heresy as a female form – contrary and difficult!
At the centre of the composition is a hybrid figure: a female body with hooves and a tail, with a dragon’s head and a cow’s head emerging from her shoulders. Entwined with her is another composite creature, combining a male head with the body of a tiger, positioned between her legs. Through the monotype process, the figures begin to press into one another, their boundaries becoming less distinct.
Michaels also reflects on printmaking as a medium through which such images were circulated and repeated, helping to fix a particular idea about women in the visual imagination. By reworking the original engraving through monotype, the image is loosened from its certainty, allowing it to remain open, unstable, and unresolved. The original image relies on sharp, controlled lines; in this version, those lines blur, smear, and partially dissolve. This shift in process moves the image away from precision and toward instability.
Revision (Venus and Cupid, venetian red), 2025
This large scale monotype re-imagines Lucas Cranach’s woodcut of Venus and Cupid, enlarging and distorting the original from of idealised myth to uneasy reality.
In this version Venus, traditionally portrayed as the serene embodiment of beauty and maternal grace appears visibly uncomfortable with her surroundings Her mythological identity is out of place with the altered space she inhabits.
The transition from the precise lines of the woodcut to the spontaneous unpredictable nature of monotype intensifies this tension. Venus becomes a figure caught between the weight of mythology and contemporary emotions.
Michaels is drawn to early prints like these as they are one of the first “mass” produced images of idealised beauty, shaping ideals of the feminine and the role of women in both public and private spheres. While Cranach circulated these ideals within an exclusive often intellectual elite this monotype reflects on how the same images of feminine identity have been democratised and commodified across time
Natasha Michaels
Clinch, 2026
Clinch is a collaged monotype (one-off printed) of Zeus and Io and a still-life of flowers. The floral still-life is traditionally associated with beauty and mortality, and placed alongside the mythological scene, the two images begin to inform one another. Their proximity creates a space where narrative and symbolism become less stable, allowing multiple readings to emerge.
Monotype printmaking is a process that resists exact replication and invites failure as the painterly image is transferred from a plate onto paper using an etching press - Smears, blurred lines and uneven pressure interrupt the refined surfaces seen in the original paintings. Zeus’s smoke appears darker and more material, while the hand becomes heavier, edging toward the corporeal and monstrous. Io’s gaze is redirected away from Zeus and outward, toward the viewer, giving her presence a sense of hesitation or unease.
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