Elina Yumasheva at Pi Artworks London: paintings coloured by bacteria

Some of the dark, granular colour in Elina Yumasheva’s new paintings began life in a laboratory, grown by a bacterium. From Friday 13 November, Pi Artworks London will show the results in An Enquiry into Colour and Matter, the first solo exhibition by the 1988-born painter, running until 28 November at the gallery’s home in Perseverance Works on Hackney Road.

It is the kind of show we look forward to most: a young artist with a genuinely new idea, and the technical seriousness to make it more than a gimmick.

Paint from a living source

Yumasheva’s material research includes cultivating Janthinobacterium lividum in a biolab and extracting its pigment for use in oil paint. Once prepared, that pigment brings dark, granular particles into the painted surface. The gallery is careful to note that the organism is neutralised during preparation and is no longer living in the finished work, so what reaches the canvas is matter of biological origin rather than a living culture.

What makes the idea work is that she sets it inside very old disciplines. Her process draws on historical techniques of preparing grounds, sizing canvases and layering pigments, the slow groundwork painters have practised for centuries, and combines them with alternative materials and non-toxic methods. Pi Artworks describes environmental responsibility as embedded in her working method rather than treated as a subject to illustrate, which is a useful distinction: these are not paintings about the environment so much as paintings made differently because of it.

A scientist’s training, a painter’s eye

Yumasheva came to painting by an unusual route. She holds an MSc in Environmental Science from the University of Edinburgh, awarded in 2011, followed by an MA in Contemporary Art Practice from the Royal College of Art in 2024 and an MA in Painting from the RCA in 2026, the latter supported by the Basil H. Alkazzi Scholarship Award. At the RCA she co-led SustainLab, having served as its Head in 2023 to 2024. This year she was a finalist for both the Jaguar x RCA Award and the Hyundai Award for Excellence in Sustainability and Creative Practice, and her work has already appeared in group presentations at Tate Modern Lates and the Saatchi Gallery.

That background explains the exhibition’s title. Her paintings ask how colour, form and matter emerge through their interactions, a question a scientist and a painter would each answer differently, and one she seems determined to answer as both.

The gallery behind the show

Pi Artworks was founded in Istanbul in 1998 by Jade Yesim Turanli and opened in London in 2013, becoming the first Turkish commercial gallery to expand into the UK. After years on Eastcastle Street in Fitzrovia, the London gallery now works from Hackney Road, and it has built its reputation on championing artists from both sides of the East and West divide whose work challenges convention. A debut solo show for a newly graduated painter fits that history neatly.

What to expect, and when

The private view takes place on Friday 13 November from 6pm to 8pm. Earlier that afternoon, from 4pm to 5pm, Pi Artworks and its neighbour SLQS Gallery host a joint press tour, taking in Kate Williams’s solo exhibition Our Own Device, which explores illusion and constructed environments. On Saturday 28 November, the final day, Yumasheva gives an artist talk at 3pm, followed by a closing party at 4pm.

Pi Artworks London
Unit 6, Perseverance Works, entrance via 25 to 27 Hackney Road, London E2 7NX
Open Tuesday to Saturday, 12pm to 6pm, or by appointment
Exhibition: 13 to 28 November 2026
Website: piartworks.com
Enquiries: london@piartworks.com

Imagery courtesy of Pi Artworks and the artist.