Radical Happiness: Artists Challenging Cultural Norms at Union Gallery, London

Curator: Shane Bradford
Dates: 2 May – 30 May, 2026

The art of joy as an act of resistance

Ancient philosophies of happiness, commonly (mis)translated as the state of eudaimonia, offer various pathways to personal contentedness, such as hedonism, stoicism, and epicureanism. Fast forward to the extreme now*, and a pure form of happiness proves a slippery conception, alluding even our best attempts at a common consensus.

Subjective experience and faith in the righteous path aside, we are left with a general feeling that happiness is real without really knowing how, or when, we’ve attained it. In The Global West, the commoditisation of happiness renders its fulfilment precariously in line with base rate inflation, and the broadening wealth gap. Confusion reigns, for without the exigence of discontent, what remedies can we sell?

Amidst this backdrop of pervasive Endcore* and the scarcity of optimism as a cultural resource, a personal state of happiness becomes a contrary force, like an act of resistance. State and late Capitalism, arguably once a means to life improvement, have shifted primary output from consumer goods to the production of fear. The presence of fear is a key catalyst of need, need a driver of desire, and desire the main force behind sales.

Art, at its best, has always served as a counterpoint to egomaniacal assumptions of permanence by every societal powerbroker from Nero to Napoleon. Thus, Radical Happiness speculates on how three exemplary early to-mid career painters enact resistance within the framework of painting, harnessing joy as opposition, and conjuring battlements of radical happiness against the prevailing politics of horror.

*Shumon Basar / Flash Art, #341, 2022

Billy Crosby engages with traditional Western tropes of the ‘pastoral’ in his work, as well as flirting with kawaii, the Japanese penchant for cuteness that has its furry little roots in shyness and vulnerability. Working across painting, as well as blockchain-based digital formats, Crosby transcends the mainstream popular discourse on AI, delivering an alternative aesthetic interpretation of technology’s more optimistic potential. Crosby held his first London solo show, entitled ‘The Meadow’ at Union in October, 2025.

Bunny Hennessey approaches the painted canvas as a site of heightened, embodied expression. Her work begins with first impulses of making, allowing sensation to be moved and held across the surface. Her paintings conjure a synaesthesia, where colour, gesture and texture register as overlapping sensory experiences. The notion of happiness, in Bunny’s hands, traces a weightless route to the stars whilst remaining grounded by her distinctly saturated and deliberately discordant colouration.

Isaac Andrews is a painter of touch, focusing on the poignant but fleeting moments in which human beings breach the social boundaries of intimacy and meaningfully connect with one another. Pleasure is profound, and the ability to isolate and savour life’s more caring acts runs contrary to the prevailing tide of cynical individualism. A bunch of flowers, a warm hug, these are the quotidian micro-events that forge a pathway to the universal experience of humanity. Isaac Andrews deftly singles out positive moments of personal connection as a counterpoint to global negativity.

Website: http://www.uniongallery.com

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