Hannah Lim: Fire | Orchid
Artist
Hannah Lim
Wilder Gallery is pleased to present Fire | Orchid, a solo exhibition by Hannah Lim, marking the artist’s second presentation with the gallery. Bringing together new paintings and Lim’s distinctive Snuff Bottle series, the exhibition expands upon her ongoing exploration of cultural inheritance, ornament, and the symbolic language of objects.
The works in Fire | Orchid draw particular inspiration from Lim’s recent journey to Singapore and Malaysia, where she reconnected with extended family and revisited the visual environments that continue to shape her practice. Working from her mixed Singaporean and British heritage, Lim reflects on how architectural detail, decorative traditions, and material culture become carriers of memory — quietly embedding themselves within contemporary forms.
Throughout the exhibition, references to Peranakan architecture, Nonyaware decorative traditions, and the ceremonial presence of footed temple urns emerge through colour, pattern, and structure. These influences are most visible within Lim’s Snuff Bottle works, where intricate surfaces and luminous palettes echo the layered histories of Southeast Asian design while remaining firmly rooted in the artist’s imaginative visual language.
At the centre of the exhibition is the orchid, a recurring motif that lends the exhibition its title. Each Snuff Bottle features an imagined orchid inspired by those encountered in Singapore’s botanical gardens. For Lim, the orchid functions both as a personal emblem of heritage and as a symbol rich with shifting meanings — resilience, hybridity, fragility, and transformation. Rather than botanical representation, these forms operate as speculative symbols, bridging lived experience and cultural mythology.
Alongside the paintings and vessels, Fire | Orchid introduces a new two-tier sculptural shelf created in collaboration with artist Hugo Harris. Drawing on Chinese fretwork alongside European Art Nouveau furniture traditions, the work reflects Lim’s ongoing interest in points of cultural intersection — moments where aesthetic languages meet, merge, and evolve through exchange. Displayed as both functional structure and sculptural object, the shelf extends the exhibition’s dialogue between artwork, architecture, and domestic space.
Across painting, sculpture, and object-making, Lim approaches ornament not as decoration but as a form of storytelling. Her works trace the movement of motifs across geography and time, revealing how identity can be constructed through accumulation, adaptation, and reinterpretation. In Fire | Orchid, personal history and collective visual memory intertwine, offering a contemplative meditation on heritage as something living, fluid, and continually remade.
Date:
26 Feb - 28 March 2026
Hannah Lim (British / Singapore) b.1998
Education
Foundation Diploma Art and Design, Central Saint Martins
BA Hons Sculpture, Edinburgh College of Art, The University of
Edinburgh
MFA, Ruskin School of Art, University of Oxford
Exhibitions
Solo and Duo Shows:
Bestiaries, Wilder Gallery, London 2023Solo show with Denny Gallery, Hong Kong (upcoming solo)
The Tiger’s Gaze, Huxley-Parlour, London, 2022 (solo)
Ornamental Mythologies, Edinburgh Printmakers, Edinburgh, 2022 (solo)
In the Margins, Commonage Projects, London, 2022 (solo)
Inanimate Creatures, Changing Room Gallery, London, 2022 (solo)
Tigers and Dragons and Ghosts Oh My!, Dinner Gallery, New York, 2022
(duo)
Parts of Self with Courtenay Welcome, Home by Ronan McKenzie x Cob
Gallery Residency Show, London, 2021 (duo)
Porta Sancta with Hugo Harris, Underground Flower x Harlesden High
Street, 2021 (duo)
Group Shows:
British Art Fair with Royal Scottish Academy, Saatchi Gallery, 2022
Eat Drink, Man Woman, 180 The Strand, London, 2022
Red Room, Berntson Bhattacharjee, London, 2022
Bloomberg New Contemporaries, London, 2021/2022
RSA New Contemporaries, Royal Scottish Academy, 2022
Next, Christies, 2022
Into the Fire, Grove Collective, London, 2022
Konomad, Tokyo, 2022
Dirt and Desire, K.Halstead, London, 2021
Mouth Parts, St Margrets House, 2021
Under Your Spell, Collective Ending, London, 2021
Zao Tang, Local Collective x Stigma, London, 2021
The Factory Project, Delphian Gallery, 2021
Origin, Delphian Gallery, London, 2021
The Holy Grail, OHSH Projects, 2021
Final, Not Over - Again, Unit One Gallery, 2021
From a Safe Distance, Raen Barnsley x Auction Collective, 2021
The Graduates: Four Pillars, Tatha Gallery, 2021
Year of the OX, Steamroom East / Don’t Call me Oriental, London, 2021
Wretched Light Industry, Serving the People, supported by Creative
Scotland, New York, 2020 Pending, San Mei Gallery, Brixton, 2020
After Hours, Harlesden High Street x Bowes Parris Gallery, 2020
Unmuted, Sky Arts, 2020.
Museum of Half Truths, 1a Space, Hong Kong, 2020
EXH 04, Floorr Magazine, 2020
Maggies x ArtThou No Borders Initiative, ArtThou, Scotland, 2020 PATIO-
PROJECT, Georgia Stephenson, London, 2020
A THESISSS SHOW, Something Special Studios, New York, 2020
RSA Annual Exhibition, Edinburgh, 2020
Dreams, Grapevine Residency, 2020
Space Invaders: RCA X ECA Exchange, Sculpture Court, 2020
The Potion Room, Subsidiary Projects, 2020
Buffering, Sculpture Court, Edinburgh College of Art, 2020
RCA x ECA sculpture exchange, Royal College of Art, 2019
Yerzel, Edinburgh College of Art, 2019
Kubla Khan, Safehouse 1, Peckham, 2019
Astaire Art Prize, Edinburgh College of Art, 2019
Butter on Bacon, Hospitalfield House, 2019
Material Dialogues, Fire Station, Lauriston Place, 2019
Criss Cross (performance), HengTang, Chengdu, 2018
Selected Press
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/ornamental-mythologies-a-lively-witty-
study-of-two-cultures-939smqv5l
Architectural Digest: https://www.architecturaldigest.com/story/new-
generation-of-asian-artists-on-chinese-ceramics
Floorr Magazine: https://www.floorrmagazine.com/issue-28/hannah-lim
Hype Beast: https://hypebeast.com/2021/7/hannah-lim-sculptural-art
New Contemporaries: https://www.newcontemporaries.org.uk/2021/artists/
hannah-lim-
It’s Nice That: https://www.itsnicethat.com/articles/hannah-lim-art-
sculpture-160721
https://www.wallpaper.com/beauty-grooming/malin-goetz-pop-up-art-
gallery-bathhouse-London
https://www.archdaily.com/971679/zao-tang-pop-up-gallery-on-asian-arts-
and-feminism-local-collective-plus-stigma-room
https://www.newcontemporaries.org.uk/2021/artists/hannah-lim-
Unmuted, SKY ARTS, December 2020
https://art-verge.com/pending-art-exhibition-fundraiser-at-san-mei/
https://artmag.co.uk/art-thou-without-borders/
https://artmag.co.uk/23883-2/?
fbclid=IwAR1KDjbpDYgdYOJcQjwuEUmWQEExg-
aBqRjhNSmTM_NbMQfpWvkvbI-PUgg
https://od-magazine.com/home/2020/5/18/a-thesisss-show
https://elephant.art/how-art-students-are-sharing-and-organising-through-
the-crisis-23042020/
https://fadmagazine.com/2020/02/18/the-potion-room-at-subsidiary-
projects/
https://www.grapevine.earth/hannahlim/
https://sukeban.co.uk/art/hannah-lim/9510/
Selected Talks, Educational and Design work:
Group talk on The Teapot Prince - with Edmund de Waal and Matt Smith,
The University of Oxford, 2022
20:20, talk at The Royal Scottish Academy, 2022
Flat Pack Design - Writing for The Museum of Half Truths, 2021
Respect Our Elders, digital artworks designed for Boiler Room and Eastern
Margins livestream, 2021
In Conversation On Technology, talk supported and organised by Fuse, Red
Eye and Short Supply, 2021
