the fillers the arms and the eyes in the eyes
ANNA BARHAM
PEGGY FRANCK
ALESSANDRA SPRANZI
21 MAY—4 JULY 2026

Barham, Franck and Spranzi each explore how images and materials move between formats, scales and contexts. Printed matter, found pages, photographic images and everyday materials appear as elements within larger spatial compositions. Framed works derived from book pages sit alongside photographic sequences, prints and gestures that extend beyond the frame, allowing images to unfold across the wider architectural field and create moments of disorientation and immersion.

Barham’s contribution centres on her text scores. Through multiple iterations, language is stretched, reordered and distributed by voices and across surfaces. In the wallpaper work, documentation of an earlier installation is re-presented at scale and pasted to the wall and over objects, so that the photographed architecture overlays and interferes with the existing space.

Franck’s work similarly expands painting beyond a single support. Alongside framed works made on pages from books and magazines, she develops sculptural elements from aluminium, fabric, lamps, cables and paper, forming installations where painting, photography and material gesture operate as part of a larger spatial composition. In these works, abstraction relates to exhibition space, architecture, found objects and materiality, while also searching for a very light, vibrant feel; a directness of movement that reflects mood and interiority.

Spranzi’s practice is rooted in photography, her book works allowing images to unfold sequentially and be handled, revisited and encountered over time. Rather than functioning as documentation, the book operates as a parallel structure, extending the work beyond the gallery and introducing a different rhythm of viewing. For this exhibition, Spranzi will also bring prints into the space, further opening the relationship between photographic image, printed matter and circulation.

During the exhibition opening the artists made a series of collaborative and improvised prints with Good Studio and their risograph machine. The process allowed images, gestures and materials from the exhibition to circulate between the artists’ practices in real time.

Arcade’s collaboration with Good Studio reflects our developing model for the gallery as a working space as well as a place of display: somewhere works can be shown, made, tested and shared.

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.

Her forthcoming solo show ‘ZYX’ opens at Matt’s Gallery, London, from 30.05.26. Recent projects and exhibitions include: ‘delirious mantra’, Badischer Kunstverein, Karlsruhe, DE (until 14.06.26); 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.

Peggy Franck (b. 1978, NL) lives and works in Amsterdam. Working across painting, photography, installation, and sculptural elements, her practice explores the unstable relationship between image, gesture, and space. Her works move between two and three dimensions, often unfolding directly into the architecture of the exhibition itself. Searching for a light, vibrant feel and a sense of direct movement, Franck’s painting moves beyond figuration to give abstract form to moods, feelings, and inner states. Her works resist fixed categorisation, treating painting less as a contained surface than as something spatial, provisional, and alive.

Peggy Franck completed a residency at the Rijksakademie in 2006, and has since been artist-in-residence at Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin (2010), CCA Andratx, Mallorca (2014), and Luceberthuis, Bergen (2015).

Recent exhibitions include In Our Hands, Arcade, London (2026); In a Naked Room, Palazzo De’ Toschi, Bologna, curated by Davide Ferri (2025); Doublet #8: Peggy Franck & Christine Moldrickx, Concordia, Enschede, NL (2025); Glitch, curated by Chiara Bertola and Davide Ferri, BUILDING Gallery, Milan (2024); and Atto Primo, with Alessandra Spranzi, presented by Arcade at CFA, Milan (2024). Other recent presentations include Club Solo, Breda (2023); Billytown, The Hague (2021); Arcade, Brussels, with Freek Wambacq (2021); Arcade, London (2019); Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem (2019); Stigter van Doesburg, Amsterdam (2018); Museum Hilversum (2017); Lokaal 1b, Amsterdam (2016); and Luceberthuis, Bergen (2016).

Alessandra Spranzi (b. 1962, Milan) lives and works in Milan. Working across photography, collage, drawing, video, and the reuse of printed images, her practice explores everyday situations, domestic settings, neglected objects, manual labour, and the gestures that accompany them. Through acts of appropriation and subtle manipulation, Spranzi reveals unexpected forms of beauty embedded within existing images and materials, questioning the forces that shape both human experience and the objects and environments that surround us. Her works often move between documentation and invention, treating photography less as a fixed record than as a space for transformation, association, and reflection.

Since the early 1990s, her work has been presented in numerous solo and group exhibitions, including at P420, Bologna; Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Rome; Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin; Monica De Cardenas, Zuoz; Arcade, London; Centre National de la Photographie, Île-de-France; Bomba Gens, Valencia; MAMbo, Bologna; GAMEC, Bergamo; Museo Marino Marini, Florence; Galleria Emi Fontana, Milan; Centro per l’Arte Contemporanea Luigi Pecci, Prato; and Le Magasin, Grenoble.

She is the author of several publications including Eggs, Cutlery and Other Objects (a+m bookstore, 2018), At the Same Time (Humboldt Books, 2015), For Sale (CCRZ Edizioni, 2013), Cose che accadono(Edizioni Fotografia Italiana, 2005), La donna barbuta (Galleria Emi Fontana, 2000), and Tornando a casa (a+m bookstore, 1997). In 2025, she published La dimensione delle cose, edited by Ilaria Gianni and designed by Filippo Nostri, published by Viaindustriae with the support of the Italian Council.

Spranzi studied at the Scuola Politecnica di Design and the Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera, where she is currently Professor of Photography.