The 2025 Amelie and Daniel Linsey Fundraising Ball at The Peninsula: Curated Art by MeSo Ventures
The 2025 Amelie and Daniel Linsey Foundation Fundraising Ball, held at the iconic Peninsula London, united philanthropists, patrons of the arts, and advocates for global health in a transformative evening of purpose and generosity. MeSo Ventures was honoured to partner with the Foundation to curate both the live and silent auctions, assembling a thoughtful selection of art lots that would not only inspire collectors but directly fuel life-saving initiatives.
About the Amelie & Daniel Linsey Foundation
The Foundation was established in memory of Amelie and Daniel Linsey, whose lives were tragically lost in the 2019 Sri Lanka Easter attacks. Their family channelled profound grief into meaningful action, building a Foundation dedicated to improving healthcare access, emergency response, and medical infrastructure in Sri Lanka—ensuring that communities are better protected and better served.
Over the years, the Foundation has become a crucial supporter of frontline medical services, contributing to hospital upgrades, medical training, and emergency relief programmes. Their mission continues to create lasting, measurable impact for thousands of families across the region.
Guests at the Peninsula, London
Supporting Healthcare in Sri Lanka: A Shared Commitment
This year’s fundraising ball placed a special focus on strengthening emergency medical response across Sri Lanka. Funds raised during the event will support the purchase of fully equipped ambulances, as well as vital medical devices and essential healthcare equipment needed in underserved areas.
MeSo Ventures is proud to stand alongside the Foundation in this mission. By curating auction lots that appealed to seasoned collectors and new bidders alike, we aimed to maximise participation and elevate the evening’s philanthropic potential.
David Linsey on stage, Chairman at Amelie and Daniel Linsey Foundation
MeSo Ventures Curates the Live & Silent Art Auctions
Our team curated a collection that celebrated artistic diversity, cultural resonance, and long-term value. The silent auction offered a dynamic mix of contemporary works, drawing continuous engagement throughout the evening. For the live auction, we selected standout pieces designed to spark energy and inspire generous bidding.
The live auction was masterfully led by Christie’s auctioneer Natalia Voinova, whose presence electrified the room. Her rhythm, charisma, and skilled pacing played a pivotal role in driving momentum and amplifying support for the Foundation’s healthcare initiatives.
Curating art for fundraising events, galas, and philanthropic occasions is one of the specialist services MeSo Ventures offers alongside its broader art advisory and collection building work. To enquire about art curation for an event or to discuss building a private collection, visit our Art Advisory page or contact us directly.
Natalia Voinova hosting the live auction
Art, Philanthropy & Legacy
The evening was a powerful reminder that art has the ability to bring people together for causes far greater than itself. The 2025 Fundraising Ball was not only a celebration of generosity, but also a showcase of extraordinary artistic talent that elevated the emotional landscape of the night.
Guests were welcomed into a curated world where contemporary art met humanitarian purpose. A highlight of the evening was a captivating live abstract ink performance by artist Junie Xia, who created an original work in real time. This performance was paired with a beautifully crafted collectible Juhnz White Tea Box, making it one of the most unique and sought-after moments of the auction.
Live abstract ink performance by artist Junie Xia
The auction also brought together a thoughtfully curated selection of contemporary artists, each contributing a distinct voice that enriched the philanthropic mission of the night.
Hadassi Reuben’s work added a distinctive, dream-like photographic dimension to the auction, bringing her signature aesthetic of ethereal beauty and nostalgia. Based in London, Reuben’s work is rooted in fine-art portraiture and visual storytelling — often using natural light, forest-like settings, or understated environments to evoke a sense of timelessness and emotional depth. Her photographs, frequently shot on film, eschew over-saturation and artificiality; by returning to black-and-white or softly-rendered imagery, she creates compositions that feel both classic and otherworldly, inviting the viewer into a contemplative space where memory, femininity, and nature converge. In the context of the Fundraising Ball’s art auction — alongside paintings, illustrations, and live performance — Reuben’s work offered a poetic counterbalance: subtle, haunting, and deeply intimate, underscoring the evening’s themes of memory, healing, and legacy through a visual language grounded in emotional resonance.
Hadassi Reuben
Barbara Kiskovski contributed a visually compelling work characterised by her signature expressive layering. Her richly textured compositions draw the viewer into a world of movement and emotion, revealing new details with every glance. Her piece added a tactile, atmospheric presence to the auction selection, appealing to collectors who appreciate complexity and craftsmanship.
Barbara Kiskovski
Yulia Iosilzon brings a surreal, dreamlike energy to the auction through paintings that blur boundaries between myth and memory. Born in Moscow and based in London, she earned her BA at the Slade School of Fine Art and her MA at the Royal College of Art, and has earned acclaim — including the Bloomberg New Contemporaries Prize and the Audrey Wykeham Prize — for her luminous works. Her signature paintings, often executed on translucent silk or fabric, open portals into worlds inhabited by human-plant hybrids, folkloric creatures, and anthropomorphic forms, merging childhood nostalgia with mythological symbolism. These richly layered, colour-soaked compositions draw on theatre, cartoons, fashion and heritage to create visual narratives that invite personal interpretation and emotional resonance. In the context of the auction, Iosilzon’s painting added a sense of magical realism and imaginative escape, offering collectors a chance to own works that are as much stories as they are paintings — aligning perfectly with the evening’s spirit of art, memory and philanthropy.
Eirini Meze and Eli Crystal with works by Yulia Iosilzon and Lydia Hamblet
The auction also featured a rich selection of artists, including Mary Pye, whose practice explores stillness, memory, and slow-revealed colour fields—an extension of the contemplative work she showcased in her recent Bvlgari × MeSo Ventures exhibition in London. Complementing this was Lydia Hamblet, whose vibrant, atmospheric paintings draw from emotion, environment, and the warmth of shared memory, as celebrated in her recent features in Blowout. Alongside pieces by Hadassi Reuben, Barbara Kiskovski, and Yulia Iosilzon, the auction wove together a layered artistic dialogue that deepened the night’s philanthropic purpose.
Eirini Meze on stage
The evening also embraced an element of mystique and personal reflection — we invited Suhad Yazbak to provide live tarot readings for guests, offering an intimate and spiritual counterpoint to the night’s artistic energy. Suhad, a former corporate lawyer turned acclaimed tarot reader and teacher in London, has gained attention not only for her intuitive readings but also for her journey from a conventional professional background to becoming a trusted guide in clarity, inner power and self-reflection. Her presence at the Ball added another layer to the gathering — giving attendees a moment to pause, reflect on their personal journeys, and connect with deeper intentions in the context of art, philanthropy, and giving.
Suhad Yazbak doing a live tarot reading with a guest
Art Curation for Events & Philanthropy: The MeSo Ventures Approach
Curating art for a high-profile fundraising event requires a different set of skills to gallery or residential advisory work. The selection must appeal to a broad audience of bidders — from seasoned collectors to first-time buyers — while maintaining curatorial integrity and ensuring each work holds genuine long-term value.
For the Linsey Foundation Ball, MeSo Ventures assembled a programme that balanced accessibility with ambition: works that could be understood and desired immediately, by an audience gathered primarily for philanthropy rather than art acquisition, yet pieces that would stand up to scrutiny as serious additions to any collection. This is the kind of nuanced advisory judgement MeSo Ventures brings to every engagement, whether curating for a private residence, a luxury brand partnership, or a fundraising platform of this scale.