Zach Toppin’s still lifes explore identity through everyday objects
Artist Zach Toppin and curator Gorge Serventi gather at Liberty London to discuss a new exhibition that reads character and belonging in the quiet symbolism of things we live with.
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Two figures sit across a marble table at Liberty London, the conversation between them as considered as the compositions hanging on the wall behind them. Artist Zach Toppin and curator Gorge Serventi are discussing a new exhibition that finds profound meaning in the ordinary: a plate of cake, a glass of oil, the domestic arrangements we scarcely notice until they become art.
Toppin’s series, presented through 75 at Liberty, moves away from figurative portraiture altogether. Instead, his still lifes operate as a kind of psychological mirror, each arrangement of objects a portrait of the person who arranged it. A book spine, a bottle, fruit on ceramic, flowers in a vase, these become the vocabulary through which we understand how identity is constructed, how memory adheres to things, how belonging shapes the spaces we inhabit. The work asks what our possessions reveal about us, the quiet narrative told by the objects we choose to keep nearby.
The exhibition draws on a tradition of still life as philosophy made visible. What might appear as simple tabletop compositions emerges, on closer looking, as an investigation into the symbolic weight of everyday life. Toppin’s palette and his careful arrangement of light and shadow across white plates and warm wood surfaces create an intimacy that feels both universal and deeply personal.
The conversation between artist and curator over dinner at Liberty London becomes itself part of the work’s extended meaning. To discuss identity and belonging over shared food, surrounded by the curated objects that define a space, mirrors the very theme of the exhibition: how we construct ourselves through the things we gather and display.
75 at Liberty is Liberty London’s dedicated exhibition space, situated within the store on Great Marlborough Street in London’s West End. Toppin’s work remains on view throughout the current season, open to those who wish to discover how the artist transforms the domestic still life into a meditation on character and connection.
Imagery courtesy of Liberty London (@libertylondon).