Bara Birnbaum’s practice is concerned with the lexicon of broadcasting and communication, and the way ‘truths’ are delivered to the viewer. As an early proponent of video art, Birnbaum began by isolating imagery from television, re-contextualising it in an attempt to understand its true meaning. For the first time since her major 2009/2010 travelling retrospective, The Dark Matter of […]
Stalking the Image is a celebration of the life, work and legacy of the pioneering Orcadian filmmaker, painter and poet, Margaret Tait (1918–99). Tait is one of the most visionary and stridently independent filmmakers to have emerged from Scotland, yet her work has until recently remained relatively unknown and its significance undervalued.
Featuring large-scale dynamic sound sculpture, film and wall-based works and a specially commissioned performance, GUSH is a candid and personal exploration of mental and emotional health in our contemporary, hyper-networked society by British artist Hannah Perry in her first major solo exhibition in the UK outside London. Central to the exhibition is an immersive 360° film experienced […]
Marking a century since the first women won the right to vote, 'Women Power Protest' brings together modern and contemporary artworks from the Arts Council Collection and Birmingham’s, to celebrate female artists who have explored protest, social commentary and identity in their work. Showcasing pieces by celebrated artists including Susan Hiller, Lubaina Himid, and Mary […]
In an exploration of the celebrated Victorian poet's significant connection with visual art, Christina Rossetti: Vision & Verse 1830-1894 brings together paintings, illustrations, works on paper and photography. Presenting portraits of the poet and highlights of the many visual images inspired by her words - alongside Rossetti's own intriguing and virtually unknown drawings - this exhibition […]
The Bravest Little Street in England is a solo exhibition by Altrincham artist Carole Evans. It features two new bodies of work which memorialize the brave men from Chapel Street, who failed to return home after the First World War 100 years ago.
But what might be forwards for Jess Fuller is usually backwards for others in her unique, invented process of painting. It’s a physical, performative painting in several acts – tearing, washing, layering, spraying and sewing. Canvas, for Fuller, is not something that paintings are made on, arriving pre-stretched and primed, but something her paintings are […]
Katja Seib’s new paintings form an interconnected group throughout which lucid figuration blurs into dreamlike symbolism. Alternately, time-intensive and rapid, her works share a quality of psychological depth and atmospheric nuance. In a group of large canvases, closely related in theme and iconography, Seib depicts individuals ranging from real-life models to imaginary personae. The paintings […]
A new exhibition by Berlin-based artist Ceal Floyer, her sixth with the gallery since her last exhibition in 1997. Over 20 years on, Floyer has lost none of her defiant simplicity or piercing philosophical precision, producing a distinct body of sculptural works, featuring poetic situations, subtle interventions, as well as new video and light installations. […]
In Fiona Tan’s work explorations of memory, time, history and the role of visual images are key. She often deals with notions of representation: how we represent ourselves and the mechanisms that determine how we interpret the representation of others. Photography and film – made by herself, by others, or a combination of both – […]
A formidable artist, Josephine Meckseper melds the aesthetic language of modernism with the formal language of commercial display, combining them with her own images and film footage of historical undercurrents and political protest movements. Throughout her installations and vitrines, by simultaneously exposing and encasing common signifiers, such as advertisements and everyday objects, next to abstract […]
Presenting both new and existing works, this exhibition, Under the Weather places a spotlight on the defining factors of Louise Gagliardi’s practice, which has also turned to the location of the gallery for inspiration. In various ways, the works explore the urban environment and the countryside, and the conflict that can arise between the two. Dissatisfaction […]
“It’s so much more interesting and life affirming to know people form very different backgrounds and cultures.” – Penny Woolcock Fantastic Cities is the first major art exhibition of Buenos Aires artist and director Penny Woolcock, an unparalleled pioneer in contemporary visual culture, in the UK. Fantastic Cities presents ‘parallel worlds’ through intimate accounts of real urban experiences that often go […]
Maria Pergay established her characteristic style and became an icon of taste by daring to work beyond accepted fashion. A woman who thrives when experimenting with material, Pergay foraged a place in a world of design where trends did not reflect her instincts. Drawing from a multitude of influences, Pergay links the natural and fantastical […]
This show is a survey of Kelly Reemtsen’s prints and works on paper spanning the past five years. She is best known for her works depicting beautifully dressed women wielding construction tools, and addresses the paradoxes of being a woman in today’s world. Reemtsen’s work expresses uncomfortable truths surrounding issues of gender inequality with power, […]
Sabine Moritz’s explorations into abstraction grew through the development of her use of colour and the exaggeration of her brushstrokes, eventually progressing into this autonomous new series. These new large abstract paintings are intense compositions of dynamic impasto brushstrokes. Their vivid colours and forms evoke a wide spectrum of visual and emotional associations.
Victoria Sin is a Toronto-born artist using speculative fiction within drag performance, moving image, writing and print to refigure attitudes towards gender, sexuality and historical discourses of identity. Sin’s drag practice emerged from her interest in male drag performance, and subsequent desire to explore exaggerated femininity as a drag queen born female. Her use of […]
Sexual Warfare presents key work by Alexis Hunter (1948 – 2014) made between 1968–86. The first solo presentation of Hunter’s work in the UK since 2006, and in London since 1981; the exhibition brings her acerbic critique into dialogue with the contemporary moment and reinforces her importance both as an artist and a feminist.
For this special exhibition, works are selected for their particular vigour and inventiveness from a small batch forced to the surface during a recent move by the artist’s brother. The exhibition does not pretend to be a retrospective – her output as designer and artist over 50 years was prodigious – but it does gather, […]
Caroline Achaintre’s watercolours and prints sit at the heart of a multi-disciplinary practice, which also traverses textiles and ceramics. Renowned for working in vibrant colour and potent imagery, Achaintre’s work often evokes a subversive spirit of carnival, creating an atmosphere that is simultaneously playful and absurd. While drawing on traditional European festivals, still a regular, […]