Into The Fold, our latest exhibition with Montcalm Collection, explores the architecture of letter-making and the narrative potential of geometric form. Featured artist, Ruth Philo, presents three works from the show in detail: Joy Squad, Summer Heat, and Blue Cartographies III.
By Rise Art | 22 Sept 2025
Montcalm Royal London House, located in Finsbury Square near Liverpool Street, London, has a rich postal heritage. Originally constructed in the 1950s, the building served as the Royal Mail’s HQ, playing a central role in the UK’s postal operations during that era. In 2016, after a comprehensive renovation, it was transformed into a five-star hotel under the Montcalm Hotel brand, preserving the building’s mid-century architectural features while integrating modern design elements.
Our latest exhibition, as part of an ongoing collaboration with Montcalm Collection, draws inspiration from the building’s letter-making history. Through geometrics, layering and concealment, works in Into The Fold draw on the symbolism of the folded letter, while also exploring communication and the resonance of place.
Ruth Philo has kindly shared the backstory to her three works in the presentation, all shaped by experiences of travel, residencies, and encounters with colour and surface. All folded, in a sense, into the language of painting.
In her words, these three site-specific paintings, Joy Squad, Summer Heat, and Blue Cartographies, began as sensory experiences of a moment, a place, or an atmosphere, where a deep somatic connection took place.
Joy Squad was created during a residency at PADA, an artist space in Barreiro, Portugal. There, I encountered several abandoned buildings, crumbling yet beautiful in their palpable connection to the people who once lived there. The colours painted on their interiors, now weathered and exposed to the elements, revealed layers upon layers – a kind of history of habitation. My early training in Art and Architectural History, followed by work in an Archaeological Unit, feeds into this aspect of my painting, bringing elements of cultural anthropology. These works become meditations on surfaces, colours, arrangements and patterns, and carry their own material presence. The geometric motifs connect with the local tile industry as well as with the painted façades, and with objects such as cups, saucers, and even 1960s–70s cars. Sometimes music also finds its way into the work – my lockdown skill was DJing – and I feel the triangular patterns carry something of the energy of rhythm and dance, lending the work its vibrancy and momentum.
Summer Heat was painted earlier this year following a trip to Guatemala. In February, I visited villages near Lake Atitlán and was struck by the colours and surfaces of their dwellings, so strongly connected to the atmosphere, weather, and heat. While undeniably cultural, these colours also seemed inseparable from the light and climate of the place. Continuing to work with the geometry of the grid, I wanted to convey the energy of summer: the brightness of the sun, the deep contrast of shadows – tropical, Central American, full of intensity.
Blue Cartographies 3 is a meditation on the colour blue and its relationship to the landscape of Iceland, as well as to our personal and cultural associations with the colour. In May, I undertook a residency with the artist-led organisation Sluice in Seyðisfjörður, on Iceland’s east coast, as part of my wider project A Geography of Colour. This ongoing project has two strands: through residencies and painting, I explore the connection between colour, people and place; and through a podcast of the same name, I interview artists about their personal relationships with colour.
In 2024, I set out on what I thought of as a pilgrimage to blue, visiting places where the colour holds particular resonance. In Iceland, this residency enabled me to make work for the Blue Church in Seyðisfjörður. Blue permeates the landscape: the sky and sea, the mountains that often appear blue, and the wild lupins blooming in every direction. The colour is also tied to a near-universal symbolism, connecting blue with ideas of heaven.
I read Maggie Nelson’s Bluets during this time; she describes perfectly the enchantment of colour: “And so I fell in love with a colour—in this case, the colour blue—as if falling under a spell, a spell I fought to stay under and get out from under, in turns.” Rebecca Solnit, in A Field Guide to Getting Lost, also writes beautifully of blue in her chapter The Blue of Distance, linking it with grief, loss, and longing. This painting holds these associations and is made with a range of pigments, including genuine ultramarine ground from lapis lazuli.
To view Ruth Philo’s work in person as part of Into The Fold, visit Montcalm Royal London House, Finsbury Square, now. On show until early January 2026.