Rafał Zajko: The Spin Off
London-based a-n member Rafał Zajko’s first UK institutional solo exhibition features all-new work including a theatrical installation of sculpture, installation, ceramics and frescoes.
Making reference to folklore, pop culture and science fiction, these works reflect on the idea of ‘foreverism’ – a late-capitalist impulse to eternally refresh what’s familiar, through reviving trends, remixing songs, rebooting or creating spin offs.
Non-linear cycles are a recurring motif, reflected in the frescoes that appear throughout the exhibition. Meanwhile A Star Is Born is an automated sculpture that comes to life through light and smoke, functioning on a circular loop to explore the tussle between nostalgia and progress.
Until 7 June 2025, Focal Point Gallery, Southend fpg.org.uk
An Unbidden Quest
Artist Hannah Murgatroyd’s first solo exhibition in London features paintings shaped by memory, myth and motherhood.
Her dream-like works site women at their centres, as ‘heroic and weary’, shaped by history and by cycles of creation, loss and renewal. In these works the female body – as mother and child – is often fragmented but ‘unyielding’, and appears in landscapes inspired by Dartmoor, where the artist spent her childhood.
Murgatroyd explains that landscape’s influence: “Growing up there engendered in me the sensation time is a kaleidoscope, that we can be present and be thousands of years old. As I work, I think about this future cherished life, wanting to gift my child the armour of making with dreaming hands and eyes.”
7 May – 8 June 2025, The Florence Trust, London blackbirdrook.com
Od Arts Festival
This edition of the rural Somerset festival, curated by Artists Council members Simon Lee Dicker (who also founded the festival) and Livvy Penrose Punnett, features the work of several a-n members.
Plymouth-based artist Rachel Dobbs presents The West Coker Strop in collaboration with Vicky Putler, described as a new ‘community folk art object’ made from rope, while Chantel Powell’s The Summoning, a ceramic and iron sculpture of clustered hands, connects the act of harvesting to global economies and politics.
Meanwhile, Lee Dicker presents his monumental sculpture Red Hot Haystacks. Made from cut grass and black light, the work explores ideas around the environmental impact of nuclear testing.
23-25 May 2025, East Coker and West Coker, Somerset odartsfestival.co.uk
We Feed the UK
This exhibition celebrates We Feed The UK, a storytelling project that pairs photographers and poets with inspiring food producers whose work offers positive solutions to climate change and biodiversity loss.
a-n member Arpita Shah worked with poet Zena Edwards and photographed two black-led female organisations in north London: Black Rootz and Go Grow With Love.
In our recent interview with Arpita, she explained: “They’re both multi-generational growing communities that empower black women to learn about land and growing your own food. It was a really inspiring experience spending time with these communities… a wonderful insight into women collectively growing, sharing and learning together, and the passing of ancestral knowledge to future generations.”
Until 22 June 2025, The Royal Photographic Society, Bristol rps.org
Sarah Casey: Negative Mass Balance
This new display by a-n member Sarah Casey explores the fragile state of glacial archaeology through delicate and atmospheric work inspired by objects emerging from ice in the Swiss Alps. Taking its title from the scientific term for receding glaciers, ‘Negative Mass Balance’ reflects on the melting of alpine ice, which has revealed ancient artefacts preserved for millennia. Such discoveries not only provide an insight into the past, but also highlight environmental change and the uncertain future this is resulting in.
Highlights of the show include Emergency! What Was Is, two large suspended drawings made from wax, paper, and glacial flour – the fine rock sediment left behind as glaciers retreat. Also on show are six prints of Casey’s heat-sensitive drawings placed in the landscape in the Swiss Alps, which capture views that are rapidly disappearing due to climate change. Rounding up the display is Casey’s highly impactful Ice Watch series – three miniature works on 5cm diameter glass watch faces, each painted with glacial flour collected in the Alps that depict landscapes that may never be seen again.
4 April – 22 June 2025, Henry Moore Institute, Leeds henry-moore.org
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
Top image: Luke Fowler and Corin Sworn, On Weaving, film (still). Courtesy the artists and Alchemy Film & Arts
