Thirty-two artists take over Brooklyn's oldest brewery to consider themes of summer

Entitled SPF 32, the show at the ​William Ulmer Brewery will feature work from both emerging and established creatives, primarily female painters​, based on distilled moments depicting more than just the fleeting fantasia of hot sun on skin.

Adrienne Tarver’s watercolour studies of a female form amidst a blue-green backdrop evoke a bather in a cool forest stream, while Alex Hammond’s crisply idealised details of American architecture and roadside rest stops recall memories of suburban life and road trips. Elizabeth Tillemans’s paintings of the sea, lighthouses, gently swaying beach grass on dunes transport us quite literally to the beach.

Curated by Madeleine Mermall, the show's description reads: "Summer’s visit is both amiable and oppressive: its sweet sap that envelops us in its hazy warmth is at first a welcome delight that, as the heat and humidity take their most formidable positions, turns cloying. Golden afternoons sweat away into slick, metallic evenings: city lights set against luminescent skies that fade fast into an inky black mimic the flicker of the lighting bugs that meander about the darkening fields and forests."

It continues: "Summer is a time of repose and reflection, exploration and adventure, simultaneously melancholic and blissful; there is nostalgia in the quietude and freedom in the frivolity. It is a double scoop soft serve, offering relief and release. School is out, summer camp is in session, work has slowed, vacation is scheduled, days are long, the sun drags itself through the sky."

SPF 32: Group Show runs from 15 June until 6 July 2019 at William Ulmer Brewery, 81 Beaver Street, Brooklyn, New York. Discover more: madeleinemermall.com.