A Long Afternoon: Martha Zmpounou

The exhibition brings together a new body of work that centres on family, community, outdoor spaces and florals, capturing the warmth and looseness of time spent together outside.

In A Long Afternoon, Zmpounou turns her attention to gatherings that feel instinctively familiar: friends, couples and families sitting close in parks and gardens, moving through dappled shade, pausing in conversation. These paintings do not describe fixed narratives but lived moments; a shoulder turned, a hand mid-reach, a glance held just a second longer than necessary. The scenes feel observed rather than staged, rooted in the rhythms of everyday connection.

Zmpounou’s pictorial language heightens this sense of partial recollection. Forms are built in layers, slipping between solidity and atmosphere, with bodies overlapping and softening at the edges, as if the image is assembling itself in real time. Colour and light carry as much weight as line, conveying the temperature of an afternoon and the ease of shared space. Florals and surrounding landscapes frame human presence, reinforcing the intimacy between figures and their environment.

Drawing on personal memory, found imagery and lived experience, Zmpounou’s work consistently explores closeness, belonging and emotional nuance. A Long Afternoon remains with the soft intensity of company: the comfort of repetition, the intimacy of proximity, and the quiet joy of being outdoors with others.