Elsa James: It Should Not Be Forgotten
Renowned British African-Caribbean interdisciplinary artist and a-n member Elsa James presents her first major solo exhibition at Firstsite, featuring photography, neon, screen print and sound. The works confront Britain’s “national amnesia” regarding its role in the transatlantic trafficking of enslaved African people and the colonial legacies that followed, offering a deeply moving and immersive experience.
The show includes large-scale photographic pieces inspired by Christina Sharpe’s notion of how the slave ship marks and haunts contemporary Black life today. James explains: “The show explores the rupture, erasure, and fragmentation of histories that shape Black life in the diaspora, inviting moments of understanding, healing, and community connection.”
29 March – 6 July 2025, Firstsite, Colchester firstsite.uk
Dan Guthrie: Empty Alcove/Rotting Figure
Spike Island presents a new commission and solo exhibition by artist and a-n member Dan Guthrie. Working primarily with moving image, Guthrie’s practice explores representations and mis-representations of Black Britishness, with a particular interest in examining how these manifest in rural areas. His latest commission continues his ongoing exploration of the Blackboy Clock; an object of contested heritage publicly displayed in his hometown of Stroud, Gloucestershire.
The show features two newly commissioned videos that put forward the ‘radical un-conservation’ of the clock – a new theoretical concept proposed by Guthrie to describe the acquisition of an object with the express intent to destroy it. The results raise questions about what society chooses to memorialise and how we do so. A new online platform documenting the clock’s timeline, from its historical origins to current debates over its future, will launch at earf.info.
Until 11 May 2025, Spike Island, Bristol spikeisland.org.uk
Natasha Rees: Time travel as fantasy capsule for freedom from heavy weights
This solo exhibition by London based artist, writer and a-n member Natasha Rees is the inaugural show at the new Ridley Road Project Space at the sprawling former office block of SET Woolwich. Originally founded in Dalston in 2020, this artist-led initiative was borne out of the urgency to find solidarity and support for artists during the COVID-19 lockdown. It quickly developed a reputation for short run, self produced shows by artists, including work by students from the Slade, Goldsmiths and Central St Martins, culminated in a bumper group show featuring 70 artists.
Sadly, the building that housed the original space was demolished, but the Project Space is back with bang with this eclectic exhibition of sculpture, drawing and printed matter. Rees sources ephemera to ‘fetishise, impotise, and propose alternative understandings beyond immediate registers’. The resulting works, which feature inspired titles such as Refuse and corpses signify life and Antechanber to the gunk zone (////), interrogate what’s seen, read and heard to ‘unlock lateral interpretations for how things could sit in the world’.
Until 28 March 2025, Ridley Road Project Space, SET Woolwich, London instagram.com/ridley_road_project_space/
Emma Critchley: Soundings
a-n member Emma Critchley’s solo exhibition takes us underwater, to explore the urgent and complex issue of deep sea mining. Combining filmmaking, choreography and public engagement, Critchley’s work highlights this looming ecological threat, prompting us to think about how we imagine and discuss the deep sea.
Soundings includes a three-screen film which considers the nuanced debates around commercial deep sea mining of minerals. The film moves between landscapes, soundscapes and voices, from an intimate encounter between a dancer and a deep sea creature to ancient stories about our innate connection to the oceans.
8 February – 3 May 2025, John Hansard Gallery, Southampton jhg.art
Vital Signs: another world is possible
A new commission by London-based a-n member Gayle Chong Kwan features in this exhibition, which brings together artists, designers and researchers to explore how the human health and that of the natural world are intimately connected.
I am the Thames and the Thames is me explores the historic, bodily and ecological connections between the River Thames and human waste. Chong Kwan’s sculptures, which include mythical creatures that she calls ‘river guardians’, are made of hand-dyed fabric, wood, reclaimed sewer pipes, chamber pots decorated with sewage ash slip and jewellery made from sewage aggregate. The fabrics are patterned with techniques such as tie-dyeing with bio-waste from London sewage, and the artist’s urine – an ingredient historically used in fabric dyeing.
Until 16 May 2025, Science Gallery London london.sciencegallery.com
Made in the Middle
Drawing together 37 artists, this exhibition showcases the breadth of contemporary crafts currently being made across the Midlands and features several a-n members.
Shropshire-based artist Halima Cassell combines strong geometry, with repeating patterns and architectural principles in her ceramic, wood, concrete and metal sculptures.
Birmingham-based member Roo Dhissou’s contribution is the sculpture Biscot Wali Manji which features woven cotton on a wooden frame. Dhissou explained more about the work in an Instagram post: “Inspired by the infamous Parle-G biscuit, this artwork takes two household staples, the charpai (or as we called them in Punjab, Manji) and the Parle-G Biscuit, celebrating the mundane through an ancient indigenous craft practice of woven desi furniture.”
Until 22 March 2025, Leicester Gallery, De Montfort University, Leicester craftspace.co.uk
Urgencies
This group exhibition offers a snapshot of the artistic concerns of 13 early career artists, who are all based in or connected to Northern Ireland. Among those selected by open call is Glasgow-based a-n member Katrina Cobain. Cobain’s practice encompasses performance, video, sculpture and writing.
Their video work Altered Flame greets visitors at the entrance to Urgencies. It shows a flickering red lithium flame, which threatens to go out at any moment. The work considers the status of lithium, an element which is in high demand for its use in batteries, but which is also used as a pharmaceutical treatment for bipolar. Cobain’s work reflects the precarity of supply chains for essential medications, and the political, social and environmental impacts of high technological demand on a finite resource.
Until 15 March 2025, CCA Derry~Londonderry ccadld.org
Soil: The World at Our Feet
Featuring over 50 works in a diverse range of media, this group exhibition digs into the magic of soil, exploring its interconnection with all life, and its vital role in our planet’s future.
Aberystwyth-based a-n member Miranda Whall has three drawings and an audio work included from her series When Earth Speaks. She produces her drawings through a meditative and labour-intensive process, making hundreds of thousands of written or pin-pricked marks on to paper. These marks are informed by scientific studies on the impact of climate change on natural phenomena such as soil, seeds, peat bogs and glaciers. Whall explains: “As the data settles layer upon layer, it becomes naturally impenetrable and indecipherable, resembling the gradual formation of geologies over millennia.”
Until 13 April, Somerset House, London www.somersethouse.org.uk
Top image: Elsa James, Living in the Wake of the Lust for Sugar (film still), London, Sugar and Slavery Gallery, Museum of London Docklands. Image: Andy Delaney, 2023
