Serf is an artist-led studio attic that represents a beacon of DIY culture in Leeds. We reflect on Jun Rui Lo and Zoe Maxwell’s duo exhibition Moments that May Follow which showed at Serf from the 17th – 26th February 2025.
Moments that May Follow is a cohesive and careful installation of paintings from Maxwell; and drawings and mixed-media sculptures from Lo. There are no reflections or silhouettes on the matte grey floor, it absorbs light beautifully, allowing the artwork to almost radiate. A somewhat transient exhibition, it intersects the evident passing of time, like the trains outside. The artists suggest that we are ‘rootless yet anchored,’ and I am grounded by the large wooden rafter intersecting the gallery space. There are familiarities to grasp, plugs, shells, feathers, but presented cleanly, leaving one to wonder if you have ever truly seen any of these objects before.
The exhibition followed the artists’ six-month residencies at Serf, after they both received the 2024 Serf Yorkshire Graduate award. Jun Rui Lo (B.1998, Hong Kong) is an artist and curator, who works across pencil drawing, photography and mixed media and Zoe Maxwell (B.2003, Manchester) is an oil painter who integrates drawing, collage and photography into her work.
A standout piece is Lo’s Untitled (Gone), a wooden headboard, inscribed with their trade-mark spirals and patterns. They echo iconic 90s tribal tattoos, if they were done in smoke and feather, as opposed to ink and a tattoo gun. A snail shell is placed upon the headboard, and a feather at the base protrudes from that sumptuous floor, held in space, invisibly. In showing us a section of a scene, Lo makes space for any number of lives within this work. Everything used is just the right amount of matter and weight, as symbiotic as the spiral on the snail’s shell. The piece reminisces on the sanctity of private space, and how terrifying it is to be tender with another person. These moments are fragile and yet they leave a mark upon us, as upon the headboard, etched delicately, but permanently visible upon the surface.
The artists’ gestures are contrasting; Maxwell’s paintings are tightly cropped and directional, whereas in Lo’s work, the hand is barely perceptible. Yet the artists have something shared in the scale of their works, and in their specific demands on our gaze. For example, in Lo’s morish and delicate drawing, Untitled (Visions), (framed in the often-shunned A4 size), there is no resting point for the eye but rather a continual, gentle movement.
Maxwell’s work is more-clear cut, From the Landing (Along The Corridor, Up the Stairs), the largest work in the show, depicts a series of stairs and entryways, with porchlights welcoming us to call at a possible residence. The geometry of this work is softened by her use of colour, somewhat muted, aged before time passes, in pastel tones. The viewer is valued by these pieces, suggestions of where to look are offered, but not insisted. Maxwell’s entryways are not signposted, but the path is lit with a simple lamp to guide us.
The exhibition offers tangible grasps on the ‘now’ with familiar sensations, like a hand resting touching a wooden banister in From the Landing. This tactility continues beautifully in the section of wooden headboard used in Lo’s Untitled (Gone), and also in the exhibition space itself: the aforementioned wooden rafter just above our heads.
This exhibition is deliberate in how it warps our perception of ‘now’. ‘Now’ is at both the bottom and the top of Maxwell’s staircase, it is when we enter the exhibition space, and when we leave it. The effect of these conversations is disarming, but we feel held, that disarmament may be something to enjoy rather than something unsettling to fight.
Further around is Lo’s Untitled (II), ‘wooden chair parts, plastic wrap, screws and spray paint.’ Two horns or fingers hang above us, the symbolism is infinitely interpretable as two, V, or double I(I). Lo’s material usage is so clever it becomes almost frustrating; cheaper materials become as imbued with texture, possibility, and cultural reference as oil paint.
To the right, is Maxwell’s Outside the Windowpane. A low diagonal line insists the edge and the surface is not pushed or pulled to create a new reality, but rather enjoyed as a place for textural experience, a space for reframed images, objects and memories. Maxwell looks back to something familiar felt in retrospect; something that we miss that is shown only in moments, glimpses and flashbacks. This is particularly evident in Static Shimmer, a smaller work hung under the low beam, the only work with painted edges. It is impenetrable and indulgent in its cropped depiction of a scene – perhaps a dress, a stage or a rippling curtain.
In Maxwell’s smaller works, like Still Slightly Damp, a photographic scale is used. The 7×5” size suggests the multiple – the printed. She recalls a past remembered through static images, rather than experience, created by painting a lino plate, stamping on it, and then coming back to it. The process mirrors Maxwell’s content, that time and images are unevenly interacted with. Some imprint themselves upon us with the force of a boot, whilst others are masked away: invisible, but essential to the composition. Hints of this process show in the unpainted lino shining back at us in the lower left corner of Still Slightly Damp, where the lino becomes the moisture, and the rigorously layered paint becomes the carousel of images we mentally scroll through endlessly.
This show was a beautiful moment for Leeds, the artists complimented and highlighted each other in exactly the way that artists’ studios foster. It is difficult to make a show look easy but here, there is a sense of quiet and care in the use of materials that grants permission to spend more time, to decipher more than we are usually permitted. It was a pleasure to be in the company of these artworks.
Following this exhibition, Jun Rui Lo’s duo show named ‘Swirling Swirling’ with Hang Zhang has launched at Threshold Sculpture in Burley. You can visit their exhibi
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