Hull-born, York-based artist Ellis Newlove has been selected as a finalist for the London Art Collective ArtEvol 2026, an international group exhibition taking place at Saatchi Gallery in London this October.
Newlove’s painting Dressed Down (2026), a closely observed painting of a black disposable lighter, will be exhibited at the gallery from 3–11 October as part of the London Art Collective ArtEvol 2026: A View from Everywhere. Newlove’s work was selected by an international jury of curators, artists, critics and scholars.
For Newlove, who grew up in Hull and is now based in York, the selection marks an important moment in a developing practice rooted in the objects, images and rituals of everyday life.
Dressed Down forms part of a developing series of paintings centred on disposable lighters. Newlove’s fascination with lighters goes back to childhood. His nanna used novelty lighters, and over time he began collecting them himself. Growing up in Hull, a city with the nation’s highest smoking rates, the lighter became a familiar object. The lighters have become almost a portrait of
the city where he grew up.
His wider practice explores the way people construct and romanticise versions of themselves through ordinary objects, images and materials. Coming from a working-class Northern background, Newlove is particularly interested in objects that might usually sit outside the traditional language of fine art.
“They’re cheap, ordinary objects, but they can tell you a lot about a person and the life aroundvthem. You can look at one and immediately imagine who it belongs to. A lighter can almostvbecome a portrait without showing a face. That’s what interests me.”
Newlove works across painting, sculpture and installation and is currently developing the lighter paintings into a wider body of work.
ArtEvol 2026: A View from Everywhere, organised by London Art Collective and curated by Nelson Qin, takes place at Saatchi Gallery, London, from 3–11 October 2026.
