UPCOMING EVENTS
ANIMISTIC WONDER
23rd January - 27th January 2026
Kieran Rook presents his solo show ‘Animistic Wonder’. On view at the gallery Joseph Wales in Margate, this exhibition debuts a cycle of new paintings by Rook, experimenting with surreal narratives that unfold intuitively on the canvas, depicting bodies, animals, and hybrids in dream-like scenarios and disorienting spatial compositions. He reimagines fragments extracted from his inner life whilst envisioning worlds within worlds that bear uncanny resemblance to our own.
Rook’s psychologically layered, deliberately enigmatic works blur reality and fiction, past and present. His paintings operate through symbolism and analogy. Images hint, echo, and stand in for emotional states. Extending the language of the picture beyond the canvas, Rook also constructs the frames himself, treating them as an integral part of the work. At times, three-dimensional elements emerge within or from the painted surface, heightening the sense of liminal space and deepening the work’s shadowed melancholia, as if each scene is suspended in a transitory, dreamlike psychical state.
Socials:
Instagram: @kieranrookk
ALL IS NOT LOST, MOST WILL BE FOUND
March 2026
Rejoice, rejoice! Find, explore, spin, jump, love is here, come find it. Join Ellie Graham (of Other Leg) at the “All is not lost, most will be found” exhibition, where a series of abstract illustrations and storytelling panels will shed light on the beauty of life and love, reconnecting us to childlike whimsy and curiosity. Interact with a series of multimedia pieces that welcome playfulness - for all is not lost.
Socials:
Instagram: @other.leg
Website: otherleg.org
“LET IT BRING HOPE
LET IT BE A TALE”
21st March - 29th March 2026 | 11am - 5pm
What are people supposed to do when on our screens every day we see a genocide unfolding, one of the worst crimes a human society can commit. Yet no government will do anything to stop it? However surreal my drawings get, the reality is more extreme.
Opening reception on 20th March, 6-8pm
Show open Thursday - Sunday
Socials:
Instagram: @matthew.collings @art4afreepalestine
SHUFFLE
2nd April - 6th April 2026 | 11am-5pm
This new body of work sees Megan using the 22 cards of the Major Arcana as her starting point. Rooted in process and play, each piece is built from hand-painted paper, which she cuts, layers, and illustrates directly onto the surface through collage.
From The Magician to The World, the works draw on tarot imagery while opening it up to chance and reinterpretation.
The physical act of collage — tearing, shifting, and reassembling — reflects the way we intuitively piece together meaning in our own lives.
Like a shuffled deck, these works embrace uncertainty, transformation, and the quiet logic that can emerge when things are allowed to fall into place.
Private view on 2nd April at 5:30pm - 7:30pm
Socials:
Website: www.meganmetcalfstudio.com
Instagram: @meganmetcalfstudio
THE COAST OF BOHEMIA
17th April - 19th April 2026
Exhibiting artists:
Anderson Asteclines, Bhajan Hunjan, Caroline Streatfield, Carolyn Blake, David Streatfield, Fiona G Roberts, Gabriela Max, Geraint Evans, Graham Stewart, Heather McAteer, Howard Rogers, Jake Clark, Jan Sugden, Joe Packer, Karl Bielik, Kieran Rook, Kristin Rawcliffe, Laura de Moxom, Mat Clum, Nelson Diplexcito, Nicole Price, Peter Driver, Richard Bentley, Shaun Stamp, Sue Cohen, Suzanne Stallard, Tommy McMahon
The Coast of Bohemia takes its title from Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale, in which he famously imagines a coastline in Bohemia, a geographical impossibility, as the real Bohemia (now part of the Czech Republic) is landlocked. This poetic contradiction lies at the heart of the exhibition.
The project emerged from a series of conversations between Geoff Sawers, Caroline Streatfield, and Kristin Rawcliffe about grief and loss, following the death of Streatfield’s mother, who was born in Czechoslovakia. When she first arrived in the UK and encountered the sea, she was so overwhelmed that she ran away. Yet the sea remained a lifelong fascination, one she later explored through poetry and by living near both river and coast.
In her later years, Caroline Streatfield’s mother lived by the River Thames, its currents echoing the rivers of Slovakia. The exhibition’s journey mirrors this movement of water, completing a symbolic passage by travelling from Reading to Margate. Margate was the last place Caroline visited with her mother; it was here that her mother took her to the beach shelter where T.S. Eliot wrote The Waste Land.
Bringing together 27 artists, predominantly painters, The Coast of Bohemia reflects collectively on memory, displacement, and emotional geography. The exhibition is curated by Caroline Streatfield, with assistance from Kristin Rawcliffe.
At its core, the exhibition considers how we are bound together through nature, memory, and loss. It invites viewers to reflect on how water, river, sea, or imagined coast, shapes our sense of origin, belonging, and return.
Socials:
Website: www.coastofbohemia.art
Instagram: @thecoastofbohemia2026
venn’s following
25th April - 5th May 2026 | 11am-5pm
Venn’s Following presents portraits and models centred on Venn, a recurring figure within Chris Hawtin’s evolving mythos of the Metics. The works explore ambiguity, belief, and repetition, questioning whether these figures depict Venn himself or those who follow, imitate, or embody him.
Socials:
Website: www.chrishawtin.com
Instagram: @chris_hawtin
the hundredth monkey
7th May - 17th May 2026
Two Whitstable painters present recent work exploring the space between abstraction and figuration. Michelle Goggi examines life rituals, while Lucy Spanyol’s figurative paintings celebrate colour and narrative.
Socials:
Instagram: @michellegoggiart @lucyspanyol
UN-CERTAINTIES
20th May - 26th May 2026
Steve McPherson has been creating artworks using materials sourced from the Thanet coast for over 30 years. In this first of two solo shows at Joseph Wales Studios this year, he continues to explore and question themes of memory and history of the personal of objects and of place.
Socials:
Website: www.stevemcpherson.co.uk
Show and tell
28th May - 1st June 2026
Show and Tell brings together a new 35mm slide installation by Kat Cutler-MacKenzie and photo series by Ben Caro. In the exhibition the artists draw inspiration from visual and performative tools used to transmit knowledge in classrooms and museums.
Socials:
Website: www.katcutlermackenzie.cargo.site
Instagram: @ben_caro_ @katcutmac
HANG-UPS
4th June - 8th June 2026
With an interest in the material and formal language of painting and the tactile and intuitive possibilities of process, Susan Absolon harnesses the fluid interaction between word, image, and thought allowing individual works to evolve organically. Working without a fixed subject, experiences and observations rooted in day-to-day life are synthesized to become a new, unexpected thing. Susan Absolon’s work has been exhibited in Europe and widely across the UK. She was the recipient of a Juliet Gomperts bursary in 2012, and winner of the Contemporary British Painting Prize in 2021.
Socials:
Instagram: @susan.absolon