Knock Knock

"We realised quickly—our work lives on opposite sides of the same pop-cultural coin. Alice brings the dream...the realisation. George brings the pause… the quiet wit between moments." Alice d’Apolito and George Bayer now open a window (gallery exhibition) in London, an intimate space where memory, travel, and imagination blur into one continuous narrative. From Alice’s pale, drifting figures, echoes of an Italian dream refracted through Japan, to George’s layered Le Chat constructions, where humour and illusion quietly collide… This exhibition is a gentle knock- knock at the back door of how we remember our memories. A collection of moments shaped by distance. By the people we meet. By the characters we invent to make sense of it all. A girl, a cat, a rabbit, a bird wandering through places both real and imagined. Alice d’Apolito is an Italian contemporary artist and global nomad who brings together traditional craftsmanship and personal iconography. Her signature "Contemporary Cartoon Pop" style is a narrative-driven aesthetic rooted in her background in Cinema and Animation. This influence is central to her approach to the "gaze," moving away from traditional tropes toward the sharp, clean lines that define her conceptual, modern silhouettes. Alice’s work serves as an evolving visual diary, translating a life in transit onto oil, wooden panels, and three-dimensional figures. Her universe features a recurring Alter Ego accompanied by symbolic companions: her childhood rabbit, Fulmine, and her current pet snails. These figures act as "souvenirs" of her journey, utilising a bold, graphic aesthetic to translate internal experiences of security and vulnerability into a tangible, physical world. George Bayer's work explores the space between reality and illusion, where perception is fluid and meaning are shaped through layers, paradox, and quiet wit. "I construct images that ask the viewer to pause, reconsider and look again, revealing a shifting dialogue between depth and flatness, humour, tension, the familiar and the imagined." His practice is rooted in a highly tactile, layered process that combines silkscreen printing, montage, Japanese watercolours, Chinese inks, watercolour paper and transparent acetate overlays. Each work is built through multiple stages: supplementary objects, shapes and images are printed independently and then superimposed to create a vibrant, three-dimensional presence. At the heart of his work are fragmented narratives drawn from memory, nostalgia and contemporary life. Bold primary colours evoke innocence and immediacy, while unexpected juxtapositions, affection beside contradiction, humour alongside unease, invite reflection. An International Pop dialogue unfolds at J/M Gallery, a celebration of friendship, movement, and the curious poetry of being elsewhere.