Past
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Lydia Blakeley
Hold on for Dear Life 2 Oct - 9 Nov 2024 Preview | Wednesday 2 October, 6-8pm So teach me now that things can only get better Only get, they only get, take it on from here You know, I know that things can only get better D:Ream, 1993 A woman, dressed in office clothing, is stretching. She reaches her hands... Read more -
Jacqueline Utley
Mirror Flower Mother 30 Aug - 28 Sep 2024 There is a sense of contingency, of capturing a very private moment shared between women in the paintings of Jacqueline Utley. These paintings might be described as an exploration of the gendered spaces that women have occupied for living, working and making work. Utley started exploring these spaces in a... Read more -
Jala Wahid
Pretend History 6 Jul - 10 Aug 2024 “Generally, it’s difficult to acquire an object without employing at least some violence. I reckon that half the objects in your museum were stolen” Richard Kandt to Felix von Luchuan, Deputy Director of the Ethnologisches Museum Berlin, 1897 Jala Wahid’s new exhibition ‘Pretend History’ deals with the intimately violent relationship... Read more -
THEIA
Rafaela de Ascanio, Alicia Reyes McNamara, Noga Shatz & Amy Steel 6 Jul - 10 Aug 2024 In the 1980s geophysicists became aware of two mysterious areas buried very deep in the Earth towards its core. One is sited beneath the Pacific Ocean, the other beneath Africa and each has a composition that is very different from the surrounding mantle, the layer that lies between Earth’s core... Read more
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Juliette Blightman
Hierarchies 1 - 29 Jun 2024 Large-scale paintings of landscapes are on the ground floor of the gallery. They seem to be set at late evening or night; one can see the gloaming stretch out beyond the grass. In one we seem to be looking through a window or a doorway out at the landscape, in... Read more -
Laila Majid
dressing for pleasure 25 Apr - 25 May 2024 There is a duality at play in the work of Laila Majid in her new solo show ‘dressing for pleasure’. On the one hand the use of a material such as latex, that covers a number of the objects that Majid re-purposes into sculptural objects, suggest a focus on exteriority.... Read more -
Hannah Uzor
Conversations with Grandma 25 Apr - 25 May 2024 Hannah Uzor (b.Lusaka, Zambia) makes work that is rooted her interest and research into both African and diasporic cultural histories and these are recalled and transmitted in personal and public memory. Her research-lead practice draws on her own family history as well as histories from the diaspora to make paintings... Read more -
Kimathi Donkor
Black History Painting 15 Mar - 20 Apr 2024 In his new exhibition 'Black History Painting' Kimathi Donkor continues his ongoing re-centering of black historical figures who have been ignored by mainstream western history or are victims of police and state brutality. He references and uses the tools of the genre of history painting, evoking that visual language to... Read more
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Emma Cousin
Tunnel Vision 19 Jan - 24 Feb 2024 “We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are” Anaïs Nin In her 1961 autobiographical novel ‘Seduction of the Minotaur’ Anaïs Nin writes about two characters who react very differently on seeing the River Seine: “Lillian was bewildered by the enormous discrepancy which existed between Jay’s... Read more -
think of those flowers that you plant
Ashish Avikunthak, Emma Cousin, Milly Thompson, Jacqueline Utley 5 Jul - 12 Aug 2023 think of those flowers that you plant is an exhibition of work by four artists; Ashish Avikunthak, Emma Cousin, Milly Thompson and Jacqueline Utley. The show is a nod to Stuart Morgan and Frances Morris’s curatorial concept for the show ‘Rites of Passage’ that showed at Tate in 1995, and... Read more -
Alina Grasmann
Florida Räume 25 May - 24 Jun 2023 We seem to be standing on the edge of a swimming pool looking across to its far side. Or perhaps we are in it, sitting in the shallow end (there is a sign on the other side indicating the depth over there is 7 foot). It is an outdoor pool,... Read more -
Kimathi Donkor
Helix / Idyl 20 Apr - 20 May 2023 The exhibition ‘Helix / Idyl' brings together two series of paintings by Kimathi Donkor, both of which continue his investigations into new forms of resistance from the perspective of a black subjectivity. Whilst earlier work by Donkor addressed state repression of the black subject as well as the erasure of... Read more
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Alicia Reyes McNamara
Feast 2 Mar - 1 Apr 2023 Alicia Reyes McNamara's new works continue their research into Mexican and Aztec mythology and visual cultures, and how it informs contemporary Latinx identities. Reyes McNamara’s recent paintings and works on paper revolve around the deity of Tlazoltéotl, an Aztec goddess who was originally an earth-mother goddess associated with fertility, sexuality,... Read more -
Permindar Kaur
The Room 25 Jan - 25 Feb 2023 Writing on Permindar Kaur's recent solo exhibition at The Art House in Wakefield the art critic Hettie Judah observed: 'Blending the soft with the spiky, comfort with threat, the domestic with hints of something wild, Permindar Kaur's sculptures explore the subtleties of belonging.' Since her emergence into the British art... Read more -
Matthew Krishanu
Playground 9 Nov 2022 - 21 Jan 2023 At first glance the works in ‘Playground' seem innocent enough: children climbing playframes, balancing on walls, going for walks and generally exploring the environment around them. It’s the kind of exploration that seems a part of the natural process of growing up. Fun, even. But look again and there are... Read more -
Winners
Lydia Blakeley 15 Sep - 22 Oct 2022 'So the winner takes it all, And the loser has to fall' (Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus) The universal human urge to win has many different explanations. Theories put forward include the rush of dopamine; our neurochemical or evolutionary inheritance from our ancestors; the psychological reinforcement that we feel upon... Read more
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Through a Glass, Darkly
Vilte Fuller, Farnaz Gholami, Naira Mushtaq 7 - 30 Jul 2022 Through A Glass, Darkly' features the works of three artists, Vilte Fuller, Farnaz Gholami and Naira Mushtaq, who make paintings that draw on, but deliberately mis-remember, nudge and alter photographic source material that purportedly speaks of cultural histories, memories and the 'authentic'. Each artist makes work from the diaspora, having... Read more -
When the Knife Hits the Plate, Scream!
Nell Brookfield 26 May - 25 Jun 2022 In Alan Hollinghurst's celebrated novel 'The Line of Beauty', not a huge amount happens. We seemingly drift, like the protagonist, from social event to social event, with an increasing feeling of unease. The protagonist is rather obsessed with aesthetics, and ultimately the reader realises that it is that obsession which... Read more -
Mesopotamian Dramaturgies & fiction
Kutlug Ataman 12 Apr - 21 May 2022 Kutluğ Ataman had two solo exhibitions at Niru Ratnam Gallery from 12 April to 15 May 2022. At Gallery 1, Ataman presents 'Mesopotamian Dramaturgies', part of an ongoing series that reflects on the history and present of the region centred on Eastern Turkey where Ataman is now based, as well... Read more -
Little kiosk of bone juice
Vilte Fuller 9 Mar - 2 Apr 2022 Vilte Fuller makes paintings that draw on her influences that include her Lithuanian background, Eastern European foodstuffs, Korean cinema, Chinese jade sculptures and aliens, amongst other things. She creates a distinctive visual landscape, each individual painting seems to be a small vignette of a larger whole with recurring characters, landscape... Read more
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AFTERMATH
Jala Wahid 26 Jan - 5 Mar 2022 To articulate the past historically does not mean to recognise it 'the way it really was'. It means to seize hold of a memory as it flashes up at a moment of danger' Walter Benjamin One of the starting points for Jala Wahid's new exhibition 'AFTERMATH' were the archives of... Read more -
Game Face
Emma Cousin 5 Oct - 27 Nov 2021 'The face is not an envelope exterior to the person who speaks, thinks, or feels.' Deleuze and Guattari, 'A Thousand Plateaus' 'I'll keep going until my face falls off' Barbara Cartland In the episode 'Seasonal Beatings' of the British television comedy, 'Peep Show', one the show's protagonists, Mark, has his... Read more -
The air is subtle, various and sweet
Adham Farmawy 2 Sep - 2 Oct 2021 What is it to exist? To stand here now in this place?' Adham Faramawy poses this question early in the film that forms the central part of their installation 'The air is subtle, various and sweet' (2021). Voiced over by the artist the installation is a meditation on cultural belonging,... Read more -
Jan Agha & Roo Kaur Dhissou
15 Jul - 7 Aug 2021 Jan Agha and Roo Kaur Dhissou both make work that playfully complicates ideas around cultural authenticity. Both provide maverick strategies as to how to navigate cultural histories from the perspective of the diaspora. Their works often seemingly draw on specific histories, but in fact in different ways each artist complicates... Read more
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From within
Alicia Reyes McNamara 3 Jun - 10 Jul 2021 Alicia Reyes McNamara produced their recent series of paintings and works on paper after researching Mexican and Irish mythology and in particular the recurrence of water myths within those two discourses. McNamara was struck by how many times feminine goddesses were a central part of these myths, yet were largely... Read more -
How it Happened
Amy Steel 29 Apr - 29 May 2021 Amy Steel paints the processes of becoming and transformation. In her painting 'Leap', a woman is suspended above a starfish, her limbs spread out to mimic the form of the invertebrate beneath her. The visual congruence between the figure and the starfish suggest a desire for transformation, for one to... Read more -
Classics
Lydia Blakeley 2 Nov 2020 - 24 Apr 2021 For her solo exhibition 'Classics' Lydia Blakeley has made paintings based on the pictures of food seen in recipe books and magazines, paintings of young men wearing leisurewear and portraits of television chefs. Together the works re fl ect on English society and its class system. This is a system... Read more -
Picture Plane
Matthew Krishanu 16 Sep - 24 Oct 2020 Matthew Krishanu's solo exhibition 'Picture Plane' consists of paintings where subtle shifts in register between different parts of the painted surface imbue his subject matter with a sense of ambiguity and detachment. Through this Krishanu questions the position of his subjects in relation to traditions that were largely the legacy... Read more
