To mark the opening of our new space, the exhibition In Our Hands begins from a simple premise: the future is not something that happens to us, it is something we take part in making. It is, quite literally, in our hands.

The works reflect a shared belief in creativity as a form of action. Not spectacle, and not simply critique, but a way of thinking, questioning, and imagining otherwise. These practices are grounded, relational, and speculative: they ask not only what is, but what if?

IN OUR HANDS
CAN ALTAY
ANNA BARHAM
LUCA BERTOLO
CHIARA CAMONI
MARIJKE DE ROOVER
FRED DEWEY
JEREMIAH DAY
COMPANY DRINKS
JOHN FINNERAN
QUINCE GARCIA
JOHN FINNERAN
PEGGY FRANCK
CLIVE HODGSON
AARON HUGHES
MAX JONES
DAWN WILSON
JOHN WALLBANK
ARTIST PLACEMENT GROUP

In 2021 Arcade shifted its legal status from a small business to a social enterprise in order to respond to two key questions: how to support important and necessary practices where artists innovate and take risks, either in their form, subject or modes of social engagement? And how can we address art’s impact on society which can only happen with a truly democratic and inclusive audience?

These two questions and the communities they represent are deeply entwined. Arcade has spent the last four years establishing working relationships with local social organisations and our new model, whilst still keeping artists at the forefront of  the gallery, also operates as an event space and kitchen. Alongside a programme of exhibitions, we will use food as a form of care, inclusivity, social glue, and revenue stream that can answer these questions in mutually reinforcing and beneficial ways.

This first exhibition opens the conversation with a focus on creativity as a form of action. Many of the works ask not only what is, but what if?

Here, imagination is strategic, and art, in this frame, is generative, porous, and often difficult. It proposes not-yet-realised possibilities and insists on keeping space open for futures still forming, even as cultural, social, and economic pressures work to close them down.

The title In Our Hands speaks to both artistic labour and collective responsibility. It reminds us that culture—and the futures it might help shape—are not handed down, but built from the ground up, through grassroots effort, shared imagination, and mutual support.

The show begins with overlapping propositions. CFF Pete & Repeat by Anna Barham is an architectural artwork that also functions as a public platform. Hosting a curated programme of ideas, stories, and artworks in unconventional formats, it embraces poetry, publishing, and printed matter—leaflets, zines, records—as forms of artistic distribution. It asks how ideas circulate, and how art might meet its audience outside conventional channels.

For this exhibition, the platform centres on the writings of Fred Dewey and the illustrations of Quince Garcia. Dewey — artist, writer, organiser, and educator — remains a key influence on our ethos. His belief in culture as a space for friendship, mutual support, and civic commitment underpins the values of this exhibition. Visitors are invited to pause, read, and reflect with copies of The School of Public Life available onsite.

Garcia’s contributions — graphic works printed on t-shirts and hoodies — extend these values into everyday circulation. These wearable artworks challenge traditional hierarchies of display and access, proposing alternative routes for cultural messaging. Profits support the youth programme he leads with Roadworks Media inside Southwark’s Youth Justice Services.

John Wallbank proposes to bring his studio into the gallery itself. More than a gesture of transparency, this act collapses the distinction between making and showing, foregrounding process as part of the work. In dialogue with interventions such as CFF Pete & Repeat, which reconfigures the gallery’s architecture, Wallbank’s contribution reveals the invisible labour and material negotiations that underlie artistic production. His practice speaks, too, to the nomadic nature of working as an artist, where spaces are rarely fixed and must be constantly improvised into functionality. The studio becomes an installation in its own right — provisional, adaptive, and alive — underscoring the exhibition’s broader concern with how art is made, held, and sustained in common.

To activate the kitchen, a Company Drinks fridge offers a rotating selection of their classic, community-made beverages. This quiet, permanent presence brings their hybrid model — part artwork, part social enterprise — into our daily space. It offers both a gesture of hospitality and a working proposition: that collective memory, local production, and shared labour can sit at the heart of cultural practice. Alongside this Marijke De Roover presents a selection of artist-designed mugs for everyday use. Humorous, irreverent, and sharply observant, these functional objects collapse the boundary between domestic ritual and critical commentary. Her work reminds us that the everyday is not neutral — it can be a site of feminist and queer resistance.

Max Jones is a filmmaker whose work explores labour, landscape, and the transmission of craft traditions. His short film Bleu de Termignon was shot in the French Alps and documents the making of one of Europe’s rarest cheeses, capturing the fragility of seasonal, hand-made production. Jones has collaborated with Mons Cheesemongers, an Anglo-French affineur and cheesemonger established in the UK in 2006, with deep ties to farmhouse producers across Europe. Mons champions traditional methods of cheesemaking and affinage, sustaining food traditions while supporting producers and sustaining dialogue around food, place, and tradition.

Luca Bertolo’s contribution centres on a placard-like painting that offers no slogan, only an ambiguous image. Is it a tool or an artwork? A prompt for action or reflection? His work invites a moment of hesitation — a pause between reading and knowing, between form and meaning. Playing with presence and absence, Bertolo opens space for uncertainty: a live question, carried and held.

Peggy Franck paints directly onto the gallery’s glass entrance, transforming the threshold into a fluid, expressive surface. Her gestures filter the light and shift the viewer’s perception of inside and out. The work emerges from an impulse to make something visible from her inner world in dialogue with the world around her. She works toward a moment where lightness and chaos meet balance — a state that feels at once tentative and complete. Painting, here, is not an object but an event: spatial, porous, and alive

Clive Hodgson presents twenty near-identical circular paintings, each hand-marked, double-sided, and deliberately ambiguous. Resisting convention, they push at the boundary between artwork and action. Do you hang them, stack them, pass them around? These modest works unsettle the static traditions of painting, proposing instead that a painting might be handled or held. Quietly insistent, they offer not spectacle, but painting as a process: unresolved, rhythmic, and full of questions.

John Finneran asked that one of his own paintings be burned and displayed in the exhibition; a performative gesture that transforms the work into both witness and residue. This act unfolds in the shadow of the Eaton Fire in Altadena, which recently tore through land just beside the artist’s home. Where much of L.A.’s art history has treated fire as symbol or spectacle, Finneran situates it as lived experience—an emblem of loss, resilience, and the fragile ground on which communities rebuild. Within the exhibition, the burned painting is not only the image of fire, but its material aftermath: a poetic refusal of permanence that speaks to care, fragility, and transformation. It reminds us that what we hold in common can be both destroyed and renewed.

Aaron Hughes’ project Autonomous Democracy celebrates declarations of direct democracy within freedom movements. The ongoing series consists of vibrant posters that celebrate the agitprop tradition of disseminating radical political messages. Here we have chosen a single piece to reflect the renewal of our gallery’s project and direction. The featured slogan, was shared by Chicago-based photographer and organiser Sarah-Ji Rhee of Love and Struggle Photos, whose work documents movements for racial, economic, and environmental justice from within. Her community-rooted practice resonates deeply with the exhibition’s values of solidarity and care.

This winter a new series of Autonomous Democracy posters will be presented at St. Norbert College in Wisconsin, continuing the project’s commitment to visibility, distribution, and collective action

Jeremiah Day’s practice is rooted in performative storytelling that challenges assumption, political, social, and artistic; about what art is and how it circulates.  Collaboration and mobilising voices and people are a recurrent strategy to push for new roles for art-making.  In this recent work, Day collaborated with his 13 year old son, Cassady, to tell the story of La Isla Dragonera, a small island off the coast of Mallorca saved from private development in the 1970s through grassroots resistance.  The idea that the resolution of the project should take shape as a typical tourist pamphlet came from Cassady, as well as the design and interior photo.  Pamphlets were made public through the local tourist offices. The pamphlets are free to take away.

In a gesture of local alignment, Robbie Howells proposes the gallery as the conceptual headquarters of the Millwall Artist’s Trust, a fictional cultural organisation that notionally links the gallery to the Millwall community just five minutes away. Through a wall-based intervention and programme-in-development, this action asks how cultural institutions might locate themselves within the lived realities of their neighbourhoods.

Alongside the civic and collective gestures of Jeremiah Day, Robbie Howells, and Aaron Hughes, Chiara Camoni extends the idea of shared authorship into the realm of material transformation. In her Gioello series, jewellery is melted down and re-formed into new, unexpected constellations — a process that echoes her wider project La distruzione bella, where acts of breaking and undoing become openings for change. Her works often comes from collaboration with friends and relatives, as informal and spontaneous groups or more institutional seminars and workshops. The “Centro di Sperimentazione” has appeared at the artist’s side for a few years now as a container for the various forms of shared authorship. With Cecilia Canziani she has been developing for some years the cycle of seminars “La Giusta Misura”.

To further situate art in civic and social life, we are proud to include a copy of the Artist Placement Group (APG) Manifesto in this exhibition. Founded by Barbara Steveni in 1965 alongside artists including John Latham, Barry Flanagan, and David Hall, APG initiated radical placements for artists within government departments and industrial settings. These interventions challenged where and how art might operate as active participation in public and institutional frameworks. Their proposition, that artists could act as embedded thinkers within real-world systems, resonates deeply with our own ambitions. As we reimagine what a gallery might be, the APG Manifesto stands as both historical anchor and living guide: a reminder that cultural work can also be infrastructural, imaginative, and directly entangled with the structures of society.

Can Altay contributes a new work: a charm designed to ward off evil spirits, and a take on familiar interior fittings. Charmed Cornice is both poetic and functional, linking architecture, belief, and social space. Altay’s work often creates scenarios for engagement, rethinking how we inhabit the everyday, and how objects and spaces can hold intention.

Dawn Wilson’s drawing A Place to Walk with Trees extends her practice into quieter terrain, evoking landscape as memory, refuge, and reflection. Known for her vibrant portraits of collective life — church gatherings, sound systems, street style — Wilson’s work here draws us into a different kind of space: contemplative, open, and rooted in place. Her trees are more than backdrop; they are witnesses, companions, and keepers of time. Wilson reminds us that the spaces we inhabit, and imagine, are shaped by both presence and history.

Can Altay (b. 1975,TR) is an artist whose work spans installation, public intervention, and writing. He often creates scenarios for engagement, rethinking how we inhabit the everyday and how objects and spaces can carry intention. Altay addresses the intersections of urban living, social structures, and the built environment, questioning how public and private realms overlap.

Public projects include open recording studio spaces MÇPS (Istanbul, 2017); “Loughborough Records Present Presence” (Loughborough, 2016); usable sculptures and networked objects “Inner Space Station” (New York, 2013); “Distributed” (London, 2012); and propositions on existing spatial and communicative formats as in “The Church Street Partners’ Gazette” (London, 2010-13) and “PARK: bir ihtimal” (Istanbul, 2010).

Altay’s works have been exhibited at institutions such as the Walker Art Center, PS1 MoMA, Bard College Hessel Museum of Art, ZKM, MAXXI, Artists Space, Van Abbe Museum, SALT, with solo shows in London, Berlin, Rome, Istanbul, Bolzano, Utrecht, and Bristol. Can Altay participated twice in the Istanbul Biennial. Other biennials in which his work was shown include Havana, Busan, Gwangju, Marrakech, Yinchuan, Taipei, and Thessaloniki.

Altay is currently an Associate Professor and the Graduate Program Director of Adaptive Reuse at RISD (Rhode Island School of Design). He is also the host and producer of ‘Ahali Conversations with Can Altay’ a podcast that focuses on the future of cultural production and its spaces. www.ahali.space

Anna Barham (b. 1974, UK) is a London-based artist working across writing, sound, installation, video, and live events. Treating language as raw material, she explores how it shifts between technologies, bodies, and forms. Much of her recent work subverts speech-to-text software, examining the materiality of the voice and how selfhood is produced and complicated in an era of digital communication and machine learning.

She has forthcoming solo shows at Badischer Kunstverein, Karlsruhe, DE and Matt’s Gallery, London, UK (both 2026). Recent projects include: Feminist Duration Reading Group, London (2025); The Tanks, Tate Modern, London (2023); APRIA Journal, ArtEZ, NL (2022); Whitstable Biennale, UK (2022); Flat Time House, London (2021); Chelsea Space, London (2021); Index, Stockholm, SE (2020); Quote/Unquote, Bucharest, RO (2020); Site Gallery, Sheffield, UK (2018); MIMA, Middlesbrough, UK (2019); Playground Festival, Museum M, Leuven, BE (2016); Wellcome Collection, London (2016); and KW, Berlin, DE (2016). Publications include Poisonous Oysters (2019) and Return To Leptis Magna (2010). She will complete a practice-based PhD at the University of Oxford in 2026. She lives and works in London.

Luca Bertolo (b. 1968, IT) is one of the most influential painters of his generation in Italy. He is widely respected not only for his painting practice, which challenges the very notion of pictorial style, but also for his writings and his dedicated work as a teacher at the Bologna School of Fine Arts.

Recent exhibitions include: L’hésitation, CEAAC, Strasbourg, FR (2024); Pittura Italiana Oggi, Fondazione La Triennale di Milano, IT (2023–24); On the Principle of Contradiction, GAM, Turin, IT (2021); Chi Ci Salva/Who Saves Us, Associazione Barriera, Turin, IT (2021); Citoyenne Reprise, Netwerk Aalst, BE (2020); and Luca Bertolo, Mart, Rovereto, IT (2018). His major work Grande Corteo (2023) was recently acquired by Galleria Civica d’Arte Moderna (GAM), Turin. He lives and works in Fabbiano, Tuscany, IT.

Bontyanak is a multidisciplinary artist from Malaysia whose practice centres on cultivating a resting space for dreaming—dreaming as an act of prayer and rest as a sacred defiance. Through this they imagine worlds beyond the colonial imagination, opening portals for hidden parts of the self to emerge and play. Their work illuminates what is unseen and seeks to transcend the illusions of binary systems.

Chiara Camoni (b. 1974, IT) Her practice encompasses drawing, printing with plant dyes, video and sculpture, with particular attention to ceramics. She uses objects from the domestic world, organic materials such as herbs, berries, and flowers, as well as the different types of clay and ash she collects and she explores the relationships between craftsmanship and the spiritual sphere.

She often develops her works in the company of friends and family and at impromptu gatherings or organised seminars and workshops. ‘ll Centro di Sperimentazione’ has been linked to her production for a number of years with various forms of shared authorship. Together with other artists, she founded MAGra, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Granara, and the Vladivostok group. In recent years, she has staged a series of seminars titled ‘La Giusta Misura / The Right Measure’, together with curator Cecilia Canziani.

Her work has most recently been presented in solo exhibitions at CAMPLE LINE, Dumfriesshire, Scotland, UK (2025); Pirelli Hangar Bicocca, Milan, IT (2024); Manifesta 15 (2024); GAM Torino, IT (2023); CEAAC, Strasbourg, FR; CAPC Bordeaux, FR (2021); MOSTYN, Llandudno, Wales, UK (2020) and the Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art, UK (2019). Camoni lives and works in Seravezza, Italy.

Marijke De Roover (b. 1990, BE) is an artist whose performance-based practice combines queer and feminist perspectives with elements of karaoke, memes, and popular culture. Through works that are playful yet critical, she addresses the politics of love, reproduction, and compulsory heteronormativity under late capitalism.
Recent exhibitions include: Museum De Pont, Tilburg, NL (2020); Centre Pompidou, Paris, FR; Museum für Neue Kunst, Freiburg, DE; David Roberts Art Foundation, London, UK; Garage Rotterdam, NL; BOZAR, Brussels, BE; Goethe-Institut, Düsseldorf, DE; and Museum Angewandte Kunst, Frankfurt, DE. She lives and works in Brussels, BE.

Fred Dewey (1957–2021) was a writer, artist, educator, and civic activist whose work bridged culture, politics, and public life. He directed Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center in Los Angeles (1996–2010), co-founded the Neighbourhood Councils Movement in LA, and developed The School of Public Life in Los Angeles and Brussels (2014), fostering participatory forums inspired by Hannah Arendt’s philosophy. His collaborative practice often intersected with performance and visual art, notably with Jeremiah Day and Simone Forti.

Since his passing the Fred Rogers Dewey Legacy Project has formed to develop his work in the form of Arendt working groups, publishing Dewey’s work and the 2023 film Reading Aloud: What Is Power? by Fred Dewey.  In winter 2025, Dewey’s last manuscript will be published: Without the Consent of the People.

Jeremiah Day (b. 1974, US) works across performance, photography, and installation, developing a practice that fuses storytelling with political reflection. Often staging performances that weave together anecdote, history, and embodied gesture, Day explores how art can mediate civic memory and social imagination. His collaborative projects with Fred Dewey and Simone Forti are widely recognised for bringing artistic and political discourse into shared public space. Recent exhibitions include What Is Power?, Flat Time House, London, UK (2023); Badischer Kunstverein, Karlsruhe, DE (2021); Centre d’Art Contemporain, Geneva, CH (2018); and Santa Monica Museum of Art, US (2015). Day lives and works in Berlin, DE.

Company Drinks is a collaborative art and social enterprise founded by Kathrin Böhm and developed with community drinks maker Shaun Tuck. Rooted in the East London tradition of hop-picking and collective gathering, the initiative brings people together through the making and sharing of drinks. Blurring the lines between cultural production, social enterprise, and hospitality, Company Drinks positions nourishment as both communal and cultural. Their locally made cordials, sodas, and ferments reflect a wider ethos of sustainability, care, and collective labour.

John Finneran (b. 1979, US) earned his BFA from the Cooper Union in 2002 and his MFA from Bard College in 2008. Finneran has presented solo shows at FARAGO, Los Angeles (2022); Arcade, London (2020, 2019, 2016); 47 Canal, New York (2017, 2013); Hannah Hoffman, Los Angeles (2015). He has also participated in numerous group shows, including at Tatjana Pieters, Ghent, Belgium (2018); Ballroom Marfa, Texas (2016) and MoMA PS1, Queens, New York (2015). Originally from New York, he lives and works in Los Angeles, California.

John Finneran’s paintings carry what artist Darren Bader has described as a “cool (like a breeze, not like a person) melancholy”, a host-like presence that opens painting as a world of colour, line, and ground. This generosity of looking finds a sharper edge in his recent series, where the motif of fire becomes both personal and collective. In the wake of the devastating Los Angeles wildfires, Finneran’s refusal to turn inward instead locates fire in paint as lived experience; fragile, unstable, yet insistently present. Unlike the detached distance of earlier fire imagery in L.A.’s art history, his works hold grief and resilience together, offering viewers not spectacle but a place to sit with what endures.

Quince Garcia (b. 1978, UK) is a filmmaker, educator, and mentor whose practice spans film, animation, and writing. Rooted in his own lived experience, Garcia works with at-risk young people to build confidence, self-belief, and creative skills. He has delivered award-winning workshops in art, drama, film production, photography, and creative writing across South London boroughs, aimed at reducing youth unemployment and deterring involvement in gangs and crime. Recent projects include leading film and podcast programmes for Southwark Youth Justice Service, London, UK. Garcia lives and works in London, UK.

Clive Hodgson (b. 1953, UK) is a painter whose work persistently tests painting’s conventions through recurring signatures, dates, and pared-back motifs. Alongside his abstractions, Hodgson has quietly pursued still-life painting since 2006, depicting the strangeness and mystery of ordinary things.

Recent solo projects include Clive Hodgson at Drake’s, curated by Arcade, London, UK (2021); C. Hodgson with B. Wurtz, Arcade, Brussels, BE (2020); Still Life, Arcade, London, UK (2019); The Electrician’s Nightmare, Galerie Tatjana Pieters, Ghent, BE (2018); and Clive Hodgson, White Columns, New York, US (2014). Group exhibitions include Le Realtà Ordinarie, Palazzo De’ Toschi, Bologna, IT (2020); In This Soup We Swim, Kingsgate Workshops, London, UK (2016); and Slow Learner, Timothy Taylor, London, UK (2014). Hodgson lives and works in London, UK.

Robbie Howells (1983, UK) is an artist whose practice interrogates organisational structures, institutional value, and the role of the artist in relation to systems of power. Balancing satire, critique, and reflexivity, his work engages with narrative, transparency, and the construction of value. Howells initiated Millwall Artists Trust, creating a platform to critically reimagine relationships between artists, corporations, and youth, particularly within football culture and its aesthetics of rebranding.

Aaron Hughes (b. 1982, US) is an artist, curator, and anti-war veteran whose interdisciplinary collaborative practice spans drawing, printmaking, and performance. His work interrogates militarism and related systems of dehumanisation and violence, while seeking collective forms of liberation. Hughes is involved in About Face: Veterans Against the War, the emerging Veteran Art Movement, Justseeds Artist Cooperative, and the Prison + Neighbourhood Arts/Education Project. Recent projects include Remaking the Exceptional: Tea, Torture, & Reparations, DePaul Art Museum, Chicago, US (2022); Autonomous Democracy, Arcade, London, UK (2023); and exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, US; Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, DE; and Ashkal Alwan, Beirut, LB. Recent publications Surviving the Long Wars: Creative Rebellion at the Ends of Empire (Bridge Books, 2024), Invitation to Tea: A Tea Project Archive & Recipe Book (StepSister Press, 2022), and Remaking the Exceptional: Tea, Torture, and Reparations | Chicago to Guantánamo (DePaul Art Museum, 2022). Hughes lives and works in Chicago, US.

Max Jones is a traditional food conservationist and founder of Up There The Last. A writer, photographer, food producer, speaker, and educator, he works internationally as an active archivist of traditional food preservation.

Dividing his time between coastal West Cork, Ireland, and the mountains of the Biellese in Italy, with lifelong connections to London and West Wales, UK, Jones seeks to reconnect people to their inherent ability to harmoniously transform landscapes into food. Inspired by resourceful methods gleaned from working alongside artisans across Europe, he creates an archive of practices to ensure they are not lost. His work re-awakens intrinsic skills of making and preserving, with the hope of carving out a better food future by honouring the techniques of the past.

Dawn Wilson (b. 1964, London, UK) “I make portraits of people and places, at church, on the street and in nightclubs. People in Jamaica, in Mali and Congo-Kinshasa. They are about the colour and shape of the face, about bodies moving together and being still. I look at African and Caribbean men’s and women’s fashion, the hair, the face, patterns and the line of the clothes. Fashion and style is important to me, what I wear and looking at what other people wear. It’s about the new, about colour and matching and getting the perfect shape.”

Recent exhibitions include: New Contemporaries (touring UK, 2022); An Octopus with Boomerangs, Copeland Gallery, London, UK (2022); Intoart Print Show, Peckham Levels, London, UK (2019); and Intoart Annual, Peckham Levels, London, UK (2018). She lives and works in London.

John Wallbank (b. 1976, UK) is an artist whose practice investigates form, surface, and materiality, collapsing the boundaries between painting and sculpture, structure and morphology. Working with fibreglass, resin, epoxy, and both found and fabricated supports, he develops accumulative and mapping strategies to build works that inhabit both void and mass, object and context. His process often explores the tension between control and chance, industrial material and hand-made gesture, situating his work within wider questions of legacy, authorship, and material histories in contemporary sculpture.

He was awarded the Mark Tanner Award for Sculpture in 2010, with the accompanying publication Thinking is Making(Black Dog Press, 2013). From 2005–2013, he worked as a studio assistant to Anthony Caro, an experience that informed his contribution to Artist Boss (2017), an exhibition and publication at New Art Centre, Roche Court, examining the roles of Caro’s studio assistants and broader issues of production, originality, and authorship in twentieth-century British sculpture.

Recent exhibitions include John Wallbank at Drake’s, curated by Arcade, London, UK (2021); Samples, Arcade, Brussels, BE (2020); John Wallbank, Arcade, London, UK (2017); Artist Boss, New Art Centre, Roche Court, Salisbury, UK (2017); Rein Dufait and John Wallbank: Frass, Arcade, London, UK (2013); and a solo exhibition at studio1.1, London, UK (2007). He lives and works in London, UK.

Artist Placement Group (APG) Artist Placement Group (APG) was conceived by Barbara Steveni in London in 1965 and established a year later. The founding artists were: Barry Flanagan, David Hall, John Latham, Anna Ridley and Jeffrey Shaw, with Steveni as its primary spokesperson and strategist. APG began organising placements for artists in high profile industrial corporations such as ICI and British Steel, but in 1972 the group began placing artists within government departments including the Department of the Environment, of Health and Social Security, and the Scottish Office. APG’s work has since been recognised as foundational to debates around art and society, institutional critique, and socially engaged practice.

Key presentations include inn₇o Art & Economics, Hayward Gallery, 1970, APG: Incidental Person Approach to Government, Whitechapel gallery, 1978, and retrospectives at Raven Row, London, 2012, and Kunstraum Kreuzberg/Bethanien, Berlin, 2015. Its legacy continues through ongoing scholarship on Barbara Steveni’s practice, which includes her recent retrospective and accompanying catalogue I Find Myself, Modern Art Oxford, 2025.

 

Autonomous Democracy: a space where we stand for love, fight for freedom, & build community Slogan shared by Sarah-Ji Rhee from Love and Struggle Photos., 2021
Series of nine screen prints on French Paper printed at Spudnik Press Cooperative
26 x 19″

Installation view, left to right:

Anna Barham
Crystal Fabric Field (Pete & Repeat), 2020/25
hosting: Fred Dewey
The School of Public Life, 2014

John Finneran
Hands, 2016/2025

Jeremiah & Cassady Day
Dragonera Pamphlet, 2025

Barbara Steveni & The Artist Placement Group
‘Kunst als Soziale Strategie in Institutionen und Organisationen’
or ‘Art as Social Strategy in Institutions and Organisations’. 1980

Chiara Camoni
Gioiello, 2022

Aaron Hughes
Autonomous Democracy: a space where we stand for love, fight for freedom, & build community Slogan shared by Sarah-Ji Rhee from Love and Struggle Photos., 2021

Fred Dewey
The School of Public Life
published in September 2014

John Finneran
Hands (Burnt)
2016/2025
Oil and crayon on linen
33 x 28 cm

Jeremiah & Cassady Day
Dragonera Pamphlet
2025
Unlimited edition, folded A4 100g color digital prints.
Archival material selected, text produced by Jeremiah Day & Cassady Day; outside photograph by Jeremiah Day; inside photograph and design by Cassady Day.

Chiara Camoni
Gioiello
2022
various metals
14 x 9 x 3 cm

Barbara Steveni & The Artist Placement Group
‘Kunst als Soziale Strategie in Institutionen und Organisationen’
or ‘Art as Social Strategy in Institutions and Organisations’.

This text outlining APG methodology functioned as a kind of manifesto for the group. It was submitted to the Zentrum für Kulturforschung (The Center for Cultural Research), an independent research institute in Bonn, Germany, in 1980.

Courtesy The Barbara Steveni Estate and Flat Time House

Barbara Steveni & The Artist Placement Group
‘Kunst als Soziale Strategie in Institutionen und Organisationen’
or ‘Art as Social Strategy in Institutions and Organisations’.

Barbara Steveni & The Artist Placement Group
‘Kunst als Soziale Strategie in Institutionen und Organisationen’
or ‘Art as Social Strategy in Institutions and Organisations’.

Barbara Steveni & The Artist Placement Group
‘Kunst als Soziale Strategie in Institutionen und Organisationen’
or ‘Art as Social Strategy in Institutions and Organisations’.

Barbara Steveni & The Artist Placement Group
‘Kunst als Soziale Strategie in Institutionen und Organisationen’
or ‘Art as Social Strategy in Institutions and Organisations’.

Installation view, left to right:

Chiara Camoni
Gioiello, 2022

Barbara Steveni & The Artist Placement Group
‘Kunst als Soziale Strategie in Institutionen und Organisationen’
or ‘Art as Social Strategy in Institutions and Organisations’.

Aaron Hughes
Autonomous Democracy: a space where we stand for love, fight for freedom, & build community Slogan shared by Sarah-Ji Rhee from Love and Struggle Photos., 2021

Luca Bertolo
Sign, 2015

Luca Bertolo
Sign
2015
oil on canvas, wood
218 x 70 cm
Luca Bertolo
Sign (detail)
2015
oil on canvas, wood
218 x 70 cm

Installation view, left to right:

Luca Bertolo
Sign, 2015

Marijke De Roover
Niche Content for Frustrated Queers, 2025

Company Drinks
Fridge, 2025

Marijke De Roover
Niche Content for Frustrated Queers
2025
bone china mugs

Company Drinks
Fridge
2025

BAD Cola is a community-driven cola developed by Company Drinks, a social enterprise in Barking and Dagenham, London. The name BAD stands for “Barking and Dagenham” and also suggests the drink is “disruptive, defiant, and transparently made”.

Installation view, left to right:

Marijke De Roover
Niche Content for Frustrated Queers, 2025

Company Drinks

Fridge, 2025

Max Jones
Bleu De Termignon

Robbie Howells
Millwall, Arcade and Me,
2025

Clive Hodgson
Untitled (Repeats), 2020

Dawn Wilson
A Place to Walk with Trees, 2024

Max Jones
Bleu De Termignon
video (still)
00:11:48
courtesy of Mons Cheesemongers

Max Jones
Bleu De Termignon
video (still)
00:11:48
courtesy of Mons Cheesemongers

Robbie Howells
Millwall, Arcade and Me
2025
vinyl text on wall

Clive Hodgson
Untitled (Repeats)
2020
acrylic on board
30 cm diameter each

Dawn Wilson
A Place to Walk with Trees
2024
Colouring pencil and gouache on paper
46 x 70 cm

Installation view, left to right:

Robbie Howells
Millwall, Arcade and Me,
2025

Clive Hodgson
Untitled (Repeats), 2020

Can Altay
Charmed Cornice, 2025

Peggy Franck
Ornamental stretch, 2025

Anna Barham
Crystal Fabric Field (Pete & Repeat), 2020/25

hosting: Fred Dewey
The School of Public Life, 2014

Can Altay
Charmed Cornice
2025
wood, paint, metal chains, glass beads,
1.5 x 91.5 cm

Installation view:

Peggy Franck
Ornamental stretch, 2025

Anna Barham
Crystal Fabric Field (Pete & Repeat), 2020/25

hosting:
Fred Dewey
The School of Public Life, 2014
Quince Garcia & Roadworks Media, Squash the Beef

Peggy Franck
Ornamental stretch
2025
acrylic paint on glass
(installation detail)

Installation view:

Peggy Franck
Ornamental stretch, 2025

Anna Barham
Crystal Fabric Field (Pete & Repeat), 2020/25

hosting:
Fred Dewey
The School of Public Life, 2014
Quince Garcia & Roadworks Media, Squash the Beef

John Wallbank
Storeroom
2025
Chipboard, plywood, melamine faced hardboard, pvc, aluminum, canvas, paint, string, cardboard, filler, wire, acrylic, shelving, steel bracket, glass reinforced plastic, Jesmonite, pigment, polyurethane foam, rope, paper, PVA adhesive, LED, electric cable, battery pack, photographs, elecric lamps, ratchet straps, plastic toy, trestles, screws, rivets, adhesive tape, staples, steel fixings, nylon bolts

John Wallbank
Storeroom
2025
Chipboard, plywood, melamine faced hardboard, pvc, aluminum, canvas, paint, string, cardboard, filler, wire, acrylic, shelving, steel bracket, glass reinforced plastic, Jesmonite, pigment, polyurethane foam, rope, paper, PVA adhesive, LED, electric cable, battery pack, photographs, elecric lamps, ratchet straps, plastic toy, trestles, screws, rivets, adhesive tape, staples, steel fixings, nylon bolts

John Wallbank
Storeroom
2025
Chipboard, plywood, melamine faced hardboard, pvc, aluminum, canvas, paint, string, cardboard, filler, wire, acrylic, shelving, steel bracket, glass reinforced plastic, Jesmonite, pigment, polyurethane foam, rope, paper, PVA adhesive, LED, electric cable, battery pack, photographs, elecric lamps, ratchet straps, plastic toy, trestles, screws, rivets, adhesive tape, staples, steel fixings, nylon bolts

John Wallbank
Storeroom
2025
Chipboard, plywood, melamine faced hardboard, pvc, aluminum, canvas, paint, string, cardboard, filler, wire, acrylic, shelving, steel bracket, glass reinforced plastic, Jesmonite, pigment, polyurethane foam, rope, paper, PVA adhesive, LED, electric cable, battery pack, photographs, elecric lamps, ratchet straps, plastic toy, trestles, screws, rivets, adhesive tape, staples, steel fixings, nylon bolts

Peggy Franck
Ornamental stretch
2025
acrylic paint on glass
(installation detail)

Peggy Franck

Peggy Franck
Ornamental stretch
2025
acrylic paint on glass
(installation detail)