By James Brewer
A royal presence, pictorially speaking, graced a major London exhibition marking what is known as the One Hundred Year Partnership Agreement signed on January 16th, 2025 , by the governments of the United Kingdom and Ukraine. The partnership declaration aspires to build military, economic and cultural co-operation.
The pact in its cultural aspect was boosted spectacularly by the exhibition’s sponsors, organisers and artists who rose to the call. Some 200 compelling works were on display from 30 artists. Catherine Princess of Wales was portrayed as The Voice of the Crown in a new painting by Alina Pyatnova, who styled Kate in a striking crimson outfit; alongside the silhouette of her husband Prince William dressed in royal blue. “Together, they form a living emblem of the Union Flag,” says Alina, who has collected many awards in her artistic career, and has a brand, Limpika Lilac, “producing fine art at the intersection of fashion, interior design, and bespoke decorative elements.”
Energised with abstract expressionism, mystic realism, figurative and conceptual art, and every variant in between, the exhibition showcased finely executed works by contemporary artists who have made waves on the international scene. Entitled Strength in Unity, it ran from October 21 to 28, 2025, at the spacious (which allowed for a grand and mercifully uncluttered layout) BobCat Gallery in west London. It highlighted the artists’ “creativity as a powerful form of cultural diplomacy,” said its supporters. Distinguished by its diversity, it nevertheless avoided an overload of ideas. Some of the works were completed just a few months ahead of the event – one of them was in the course of completion on the opening event.
The artists involved have settled temporarily in the UK since the full-scale invasion by Russia of their homeland. Several have not seen close family members for three or more years.
Among those on such emotional journeys, the resilient Oksana Masiutkina is a committed artist with acrylic and pastel in hand but admits that “for more than three years I couldn’t paint or draw any memory” of her “lovely city, place of my heart.” That city is the Dnipro river port of Nova Kakhovka in southern Ukraine. (The region suffered from massive flooding after a huge dam serving a power plant; was breached in June 2023 and from the forcible removal of children to Russian-controlled facilities.)
Turning to philosophical consolation, Oksana says: “Travel is my great passion! Each journey a portal to a new reality. Have you noticed that in order to change something, you have to move somewhere?”
Gesturing to one of her works on show, she says: “All the details appeared so unexpectedly, and I changed them many times. A huge difference between the first idea and the result. If you wish to travel to different picturesque places, enjoy each moment and open new opportunities, this artwork helps you to manifest and accept all that.”
Oksana is inspired by the natural scenery of Great Britain as reflected in three of her works: Pink Dreams, 2023, is in acrylic; Movement, 2024, in soft pastel on paper is “a scene imbued with the raw power of water.” Embodying vitality and transformation, it is “an artwork that belongs on the desk of every dreamer.” The Spring Mood, 2025, is acrylic on canvas pad. “Spring in the United Kingdom is the season of extraordinary renewal – a symphony of colours and impossible harmonies. .. The painting is a meditation on gratitude and presence. It reminds us to pause, to live in the moment, and to cherish the priceless gift of life in all its beauty.”
One of her works has been featured at the Osborne Studio Gallery in Motcomb Street, Belgravia. Oksana is accomplished in many spheres, including as a certified practitioner of the meditation technique Theta healing and of Access Bars® (“a set of 32 points on the head which, when lightly touched, stimulate positive change in the brain and defragment the electromagnetic components of stress, thoughts and emotions.”). She worked in quality management at industrial enterprises, in marketing in the US, and is a business and life coach.
London-based Iva Urban set up an installation she called Propaganda Art Channel. Vacuuming Your Mind. Signal 1: Realignment. This is at the point “where a mad world transforms into art – where distortion becomes creation. The work reimagines the television as a symbol of control and propaganda transformed through the act of creation. [It] contemplates how external influence infiltrates the mind and how art transforms it into a space of freedom.”
Iva completed her installation before the eyes of visitors to the London gallery by symbolically covering in white pigment a display of newspaper cuttings on an easel. She says that her practice explores perception, silence, and presence, and addresses displacement and ecological trauma. Her works, “poised between sculpture and painting, embody both restraint and intensity – a language of silence shaped by war and migration.”
Educated at Lviv National Academy of Arts, the Kosiv Institute of Applied and Decorative Arts in western Ukraine, and London Metropolitan University, Iva has exhibited widely across the UK, including at the Women in Art Prize (Marylebone), Thresholds (University of Greenwich), and Serendipity (HJ Gallery).
A profound perspective on the interweaving of modern identity, displacement and memory, including the parallel of animal and human traits, came from Olena Kulinich via her painting featuring a zebra in pinstripes. Yes, this ‘zebra’ is anthropomorphised as a businessman in City attire. The title Knight’s Move alludes both to the unexpected transformation of the zebra and to the L-shaped moves of knights on a chessboard – suggesting a subversive manoeuvre, a departure from conventional paths.
In Olena’s monochromatic setting the zebra torso’s typical strong black and white stripes are unseen, and the creature’s gaze is direct yet enigmatic, evoking both familiarity and estrangement. The mixed media accumulation of acrylic, plaster materials, fabric, sculpture paste, binding materials, wooden moulding, and art varnish, with an inset of textured fabric, was used to highlight the pinstripe perspicacity.
Among Olena’s inspirations are the bronze sculptures by British and Australian artists Gillie and Marc that have been drawing huge interest in public thoroughfares including in London (ten currently in the main shopping street of Kingston upon Thames, for example) and New York. The duo’s series A Wild Life for Wildlife is aimed at raising awareness, funds and support for endangered animals.
Now based in London, Olena studied at art college in Dnipro, exhibiting in Ukraine and later in the Netherlands. Because of relocation, both voluntary and imposed, many of her artworks have been left behind or donated to galleries. Today her work continues to reflect themes of transformation, rootedness, and the fragile bond between the natural and the constructed world.
Across sculpture, painting, and photography, Olha Barvynka explores questions including gender inequality, abuse, violence, war and trauma. She brings a deeply personal and politically resonant approach to abstraction, informed by her experience of displacement and historical upheaval.
Fragmentation lies at the centre of her process: destruction becomes a form of drawing, a mark of both violence and intention. Olha is drawn to ruins “as charged spaces of memory and tension, where broken forms hold both collective trauma and the possibility of utopia.” She assembles abandoned and fabricated elements – metal, concrete, glass, textiles – into works that oscillate between order and collapse. In the acrylic triptych Space and Time, her language is expanded into a cosmic register and the perpetual flux of time. Born in Bila Tserkva, a city 87 km south of Kyiv, Olha is now based in the UK.
Trained in architecture, Irina Kara discovered her artistic voice through painting, and her structural discipline is applied to an intuitive, emotional language. Her paintings reflect her exploration of existence, “a dialogue between internal experience and universal human themes.”
Irina’s work – such as her 2024 oil on canvas Birds — is recognised widely for its expressive depth. She has received numerous awards, including 1st and 2nd prizes at the Venice Biennale, second place at Art Week Berlin, and second and third places at Art Week Bulgaria. Her works are in collections including the Museum of Modern Art in Nicosia, Cyprus, and the National Museum of Moldova.
According to the excellent exhibition catalogue, Alina Pyatnova through her art “continues to assert a voice of quiet strength and enduring significance, a presence that resonates with elegance, depth, and clarity.” Her oil painting The Voice of the Crown “is more than a royal tableau; it is a profound metaphor for a woman’s voice within the monarchy coming into its own. [the Princess of Wales] is heard. Her presence is the centre of gravity” In the painting “her scarlet attire pulses vividly against the regal blue – a visual heartbeat. Her husband’s figure appears only in part, a steadfast presence: supportive, yet never overpowering. Their colours entwine into a living symbol of Britain, where the personal merges seamlessly with the national… the woman within the monarchy is both an adornment and a voice. A harmony between tradition and modernity, between duty and the inner self.” Like many others, Alina is captivated by the aura of the Princess, who typically was described in May 2025 at a British Fashion Council event as “a real style icon.” Patrick McDowell, winner of the Queen Elizabeth II award for British Design, said that she “really flies the flag for British fashion.”
Alina won acclaim earlier in 2025 at the London Art Biennale, for Three Images of Majesty, a tribute to the late Queen Elizabeth II and gesture of gratitude for the support from the British royal family and public for Ukrainian resistance.
Another side of Alina’s calm objectivity is her series Surrealism & Pop Art Collection. Boop-Boop-be-Doop, oil on canvas, 2024, is a symbolic fusion of two figures of pop culture: screen star Marilyn Monroe and artist Andy Warhol. Through a stylised reinterpretation, Alina points to how the aesthetics and ideology of pop art were shaped at the crossroads of glamour, mass culture, and personal myth. Marilyn, as the embodiment of feminine allure and vulnerability, and Warhol’s Campbell Soup Can, a hallmark of consumerism, speak to the power of imagery and its influence on cultural perception.
Alina graduated from art school in 2001 and, in 2008, earned a degree in architectural environment design. Beyond the canvas, she integrates sculpture, mosaic, ceramics, and monumental art into bespoke interior design projects.
Julia Shilo metamorphoses traces of the past into contemporary poetic compositions. She layers fragments of old books, handwritten letters, and sheet music to suggest narratives of identity, memory, “and the inner core that shapes human experience.” Her practice invites a meditation on fragility, endurance, nostalgia and renewal. One example is Alethia, recently composed in mixed media: acrylic, collage, and pastel on canvas. In Ancient Greek philosophy, Alethia is the personification of truth.
Fine art photographer Olga Vynnyk’s poignant print The Birth of Eve “is the image of zero point, when everything is lost.” Amplifying this unflinching vision, Olga adds: “All that once made up life is left behind, and the world around is erased.” Despite that, Eve “emerges from the water as if born anew, vulnerable, naked, without support. Yet there is breath, a smile, and faith. Faith becomes her only possession and the beginning of a new life. In this vulnerability, strength is born; in emptiness, fullness appears… The photograph speaks of how a beginning comes precisely at the moment when it seems that everything has ended.”
Born in Kharkiv, Olga is now based in North Devon. She seeks to capture the emotional resonance and poetry of fleeting moments, as in A Moment of Eternity (2025), which was selected for the London Art Biennale. In Olga’s series The Refugee’s Path each work marks a step along the path to rebirth, the confrontation with inner fears, adaptation to a foreign land, and finally, transformation – the emergence of a new strength and beauty born from pain.
Strength in Unity – “affirming the role of creativity as a form of resistance in the face of war” – was presented by Save Art in Ukraine in partnership with Ukrainian Art House in London.
The exhibition was produced by Yaroslav Bystrushkin, founder and partner of Save Art in Ukraine. He is an art historian and lecturer who has long supported cultural and educational institutions in Kyiv. Save Art in Ukraine comprises an international team of art historians, lawyers, collectors, archaeologists, restorers, art managers, historians, and IT specialists. They campaign to protect the cultural heritage of Ukraine, many collections and museums having been lost or damaged during what they call the Russian “attempt at cultural genocide.”
Save Art in Ukraine has a permanent office in London. Prof Bystrushkin said: “We are honoured to present Strength in Unity in London, a city that embodies cultural dialogue and global exchange.”
Ukrainian Art House in London is a hub for cultural diplomacy and showcasing Ukrainian artists, designers and craftspeople, and strengthening artistic collaboration between Ukraine and the UK.
A share of proceeds from the exhibition is supporting initiatives to protect and preserve Ukraine’s museums and art collections and defend cultural treasures under threat.
Separately, several of the artists make personal donations to medical and other services, including the provision of prosthetic limbs and therapy for injured combatants and civilians.
BobCat Gallery was founded by Catherine (Cat) Sweet, with the motto Affordable art for all. The gallery name commemorates her friendship with Robert (Bob) Miller, a talented artist who died in 2010. Cat Sweet is a self-taught artist working in mixed media, creating expressive abstract pieces, and exploring cultural associations with colour. The gallery is at Putney Exchange shopping centre, London SW15.
