Munich-born, London-based artist Sophie von Hellermann returns to London's Vilma Gold with Accidental Portraits. The artist's distinctive application of pigment and acrylic emulsion colors a series of 12 large-scale canvases that veers toward the surreal, with intermittent references to literary figures and mythologies. Of special note is The Birth of Minerva, which, tucked away in the gallery office, forcefully captures baby Minerva's birth from Jupiter's head (coincidently, the gallery is on Minerva Street). Similar vigor is present in It Began in Naples, in which a colossal woman ambiguously towers over, or stumbles past, a ghostly motorcyclist. Other works slide across the canvas in a watery miasma; it's when von Hellermann exploits unsettling narratives that she's at her dreamy best.

-Helen Holtom