The Archive

Paul Kenton’s independent exhibition Urban Echoes took place on Marylebone Road, London, in July 2026, at the Bomb Factory Art Foundation: 6,000 square feet of floor space, and a great deal of wall.

The exhibition ran for three weeks and had a wonderful reception, from Paul’s private collectors on the opening night and from the public in the weeks after. It was equally wonderful to find homes for a number of large-scale studio works, and many smaller originals.

Paul took this monumental challenge in his stride, as an opportunity to celebrate six years of artistic development and to push his own boundaries: as a creative, and as an artist running his own business, forging his own brand and curating his exhibition outside gallery control.

Carving his own path through the contemporary art world, this chapter signified autonomy, and a true evolution into a contemporary heavyweight rather than being boxed into the status quo.

The exhibition brought together Paul’s large-scale museum-grade works, his artisan ink on Indian paper collection, plein air paintings from his many international travels and, for the first time, an immersive installation: an interactive, multi-sensory design to bring the subject at its centre to light.

Having control of the design allowed a true expression of how Paul imagined his exhibition. The hang blended contemporary arrangement with the grand exhibitions of the past: the French Royal Academy’s Salon, the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition in London, and the Salon des Refusés of 1863.

The Salon des Refusés was one of the catalysts of Impressionism. Many of the early Impressionists, Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro and Paul Cézanne among them, were repeatedly rejected from the Paris Salon by the conservative establishment. Paul, who was himself turned down by art school as a student, felt a particular kinship with the movement he still draws on today, and wanted to express it.

The busy, chaotic but magnificent walls were an ode to the past, set against sleek, minimal, contemporary areas of the room given over to Paul’s abstract impressionism on large-scale canvas and aluminium.

Organising the logistics was a project in itself. Two moving vans carried the paintings and materials from North Devon to London, arriving in the dead of night at around 2am. The work was unloaded, and the two-and-a-half-day set-up began.

Months before, at HQ, the team planned the whole show on a 1:40 scale model of the gallery, and designed hanging systems to hold artworks in the windows and around the space.

The immersive experience placed the painting Currents of Light at its centre, set in the scene and environment in which it was made. The set was hidden behind a retractable screen, driven by a custom motor and an automatic sensor designed by team member Joe Kaufman, who also designed the gallery’s hanging systems and the installation’s overall build.

As visitors walked in, a projected recording of the painting being made played across the screen. The screen became transparent to reveal the artwork behind it, then rose as the recording reached its climax, revealing the whole scene.

All of it was carried by an immersive four-point hi-fi soundscape of city ambience, composed by Will Sainsbury from field recordings made around London, to place the viewer viscerally, almost surreally, at the location itself.

Many thanks to the team, Amelia, Joe, James, Marina, Audrey, Ian, Ress, Will, Alan, Lydia and Brandon, and to the security team, for their wonderful work.

Paul had the honour of developing three artworks in 2015 for the Brazilian sporting and football icon Pelé at Halcyon Gallery. Paul’s final artwork, entitled “Pelé”, sat alongside other outstanding pieces from Andy Warhol’s Athletes series, and works by Lorenzo Quinn, Mitch Griffiths, Pedro Paricio, Ernesto Cánovas and others.

These years were highly formative in Paul’s contemporary and current work. They were instrumental in developing many of his current artistic approaches and in shaping the energy of his modern abstract impressionism.

There have been many milestones in Paul’s career, but this was a fundamental shift: in his advancement professionally, and as a creative and an artist, as his work naturally found its place among art-world heavyweights.

Alongside his three works, Paul had the opportunity to photograph Pelé, which was a true honour.

One of the lesser-known parts of Paul’s artistic process is his deep respect and love for photography, and the role it plays in his work. Shaped through many years of travel, whether capturing coastlines or cities, many of these photographs inform the subject and composition of Paul’s paintings.

From one of these portraits Paul developed one of his paintings of the great football icon. Even in a subject as unfamiliar as portrait painting, Paul captured a remarkably beautiful quality, and found the essence and soul of a true worldwide icon.

Paul’s ability to move between subjects and styles speaks volumes about him as a gifted and deeply driven artist, one who has always been at the forefront of his own stylistic development.

We still see those threads today, as Paul continually works to reinvent and further his work.

In 2012 Paul was commissioned by the OHC to develop a selection of artworks for the London Olympic Games. It was a milestone moment in Paul’s growing career that earned him visibility in the contemporary space, and shifted his work onto the path that has led to the present day.

The integration of drips and liquid textures with the form and structure of the iconic London stadium and skyline is highly telling of Paul’s current work. Though his work has certainly evolved, those roots are clearly visible today. The DNA of past projects and milestones lives on, with Paul now creating many more scenes of London and the wider world.

The early development of his abstract sensibility is clear in these pieces.

That thought echoes through the years since. We still see its central philosophy in Paul’s work: loose interpretation, and a reliance on energy and emotion to build a painting rather than on visual accuracy.

Through time, ideas like this have deepened and grown more complex in Paul’s painting. In many recent pieces his confidence in translating the emotion and character of a city is only growing, and the visceral nature of much of his current work comes from these earlier pieces and the lessons in them.

It is impossible to separate an artist from the depth and rigour of their process, and from how they have distilled their knowledge and matured over time.

Paul’s work is a clear example of this.