Side by Side Returns — Aures London, 2025

In 2025, Shantell Martin and I brought Side by Side to Aures London — the second iteration of an exhibition that first took shape in the Design District in 2021.

From Greenwich to Mayfair

The original Side by Side was conceived as a retrospective and exploration — past work, new work, and collaborative pieces presented together for the first time since we met in Tokyo in 2007. The Design District show had the energy of a reunion, with all the informality and experimentation that a brand-new space affords.

The Aures presentation carried a different register. Aures is a gallery with a defined programme and an audience attuned to contemporary practice. Showing the collaboration in this context meant the work had to stand on its own terms — not as a novelty pairing, but as a genuine artistic dialogue between two distinct practices united by line, language, and improvisation.

What Changed

The work itself had evolved in the years between the two shows. Our NFT collaborations — Bowie 1976, Solitaire, and Lapidarist — had deepened our understanding of how Shantell's drawn line and my generative 3D processes could merge. The new works for Aures reflected that maturity: more confident, more integrated, less concerned with demonstrating the collaboration and more focused on what it produces.

For my own practice, the Aures show was significant because it placed my Archetype work — the large-scale linear networks of interlocked characters from endangered alphabets — directly alongside Shantell's drawing. The formal conversation between her improvised lines and my researched, systematic compositions made something visible about both practices that neither shows alone.

Side by Side continues to evolve. Each iteration teaches us something new about what the collaboration is and what it might become.