DUMP

What are you doing this weekend? I’ll be making a map of the exhibition ‘Between Occurrences’ and you’re invited to join me! This workshop is a space to explore together, finding our own personal ways of engaging with an art exhibition and describing this experience through mark-making. I’ll be there from 3 to 5pm - feel free to drop in anytime, whether it’s for half an hour or the entire session. Materials will be provided. The workshop is £5 and you can either book through the link in my bio or just come on the day. Please drop me a message if the ticket fee is a barrier to joining in. As a taster, here are some photos of workshops I’ve led or co-facilitated! Image 2-3: ‘If I Were A Mushroom’ with @learnmoveteachsmile at @propositionstudios Image 4-5: ‘Mapping Internal Landscapes’ with @yuecenwang_cjj and supported by @helloo0dump Image 6-7: ‘Walking Maps’ as part of Mindful Art Sessions organised by @fuseboxkingston and @creativeyouthuk Thank you to @snappysnape @palacecinemaartcollective and @hyphastudios for making this workshop possible. PS The poster image is a close up of one of the paintings I’m showing in ‘Between Occurences’

This past year has been an incredibly exciting one for DUMP. Thank you to everyone who made it happen 💛 In the first part of the year, we launched our video game made from 46 artworks 3D scanned from the archive, expanding how our collection can be experienced beyond physical space. In the second half of the year, we deliberately slowed down our exhibition programme and launched the inaugural Thoughts section online - creating space to reflect, listen, and archive voices from our community. Looking ahead to 2026, we’ll keep archiving: more artworks, more thoughts 💭💕💕 As always, this project wouldn’t be possible without the long-term support from Big Yellow Self Storage (@bigyellowselfstorage ), everyone who has participated, and everyone who continues to follow and support DUMP. Thank you so much for being part of this journey x

💺🛩️𝑳𝒊𝒃𝒓𝒂𝒓𝒚 𝑴𝒐𝒕𝒉𝒆𝒓𝒔𝒉𝒊𝒑 2025 𝑾𝒓𝒂𝒑, starring Margot Robbie, Meryl Streep, Tilda Swinton, and Julia Roberts. 2025 is the year I gave my whole heart to Library Mothership @library_mothership —my home library and nomadic publication curatorial project. Sometimes people thought there’s a team behind it, but it’s just me (the Mothership, the army of me) in my living room, reading, designing, writing, thinking, and dreaming about books. Lots of books. And traveling the world with suitcases of books alongside the best co-travelers and readers. From London (@royalcollegeofart @piccalilli.gallery @biblioteka_library ) to New York (@bungee.space ), Edinburgh (@fruitmarketgallery ), Basel (@ineverreadartbookfairbasel ) Milan, Paris (@offprint_projects ), Lesvos(@hermitage_sykaminea ), Amsterdam(@byobfair ), and Tokyo (@tokyoartbookfair ): performances, zine workshops, pop-up reading rooms, lectures, book fairs, a month-long off-grid residency, and gallery exhibitions. Every Mothership landing was a time capsule; every collaboration a gift. 2026 new journeys ahead. Welcome aboard Library Mothership.🛩️ Beyond grateful,
Athena @athenamothership ——— Film clips credited to:
Barbie (2023)
The Devil Wears Prada (2006)
Only Lovers Left Alive (2013)
Notting Hill (1999) ——— @library_mothership

Hello friends, we are excited to share that we’ve secured additional storage space, giving us the capacity to save more works that artists can no longer keep for themselves. So here we are - a new Open Call. 🫶 This Open Call is not for an exhibition. It is for works at risk of being discarded or lost to circumstance. We will provide a long term home for all selected pieces, for as long as DUMP exists. All selected works will be announced and presented via Instagram and our website from mid-February 2026 onwards. Logistically, we want to accommodate the varied needs and timelines artists may have during the festive season. We are therefore introducing two submission deadlines: ☞For works needing to be dropped off before Christmas (22 December)
Submission deadline: 12 December 2025 ☞For works needing a home from the new year onwards
Submission deadline: 31 January 2026 More details can be found via the link in bio within the submission form.  Happy submission xx🐾 As always, Big thanks to Big Yellow Self Storage(@bigyellowselfstorage ) for your ongoing support! #opencall #opencallforartists #opencalls

Back in July 2024, DUMP rescued one artwork from Laurence Owen(@laurenceowen )’s, at a moment when the artist faced eviction from their studio and was about to lose the storage of a collection of works made over the years. Owen announced that via his social media that dozens of works needed to leave the studio immediately, offering them freely to anyone able to give them space. Among the works offered, DUMP was honoured to provide a space for TM (2022), H122 × W222 × D37 cm, mixed media. Here’s a quote from Owen’s original post: “As a result of inflation, I cannot afford to let the work into which I’ve given everything continue to cost me in the form of monthly storage outgoings. A sign of the times: any apotheosis of creative transcendence is hijacked by rental-figure affordability. Therefore, I want my work to be out in the world.” As we move forward, DUMP remains committed to offering space and care for works at risk of disappearance. 
TM is currently stored within our Big Yellow Storage unit as part of their ongoing sponsorship.

Back in April this year, we learned that artist Maggie Menghan Chen (@m_a_9_s ) was preparing to leave London for some time. Her work Tiger Head and Claws (2022), measuring 95 × 95× 100 cm, first shown at her Chelsea College of Arts degree show, could not make the journey with her - the scale and cost of shipping placing it at risk of disposal. DUMP had the greatest honour to offer it a forever home - for as long as DUMP exists. This work is currently stored with our storage partner Big Yellow Storage (@bigyellowselfstorage ). Soon, its 3D recreation will be viewable in our online catalogue too.

In art school, waste piles up faster than intention. As technicians, Isa Bascuñana and Ezgi Kaya (@isabascunana @ezzzzzzgi ) are tasked with clearing it. In response, they create Skiplimpics: a sport where discarded works are thrown into the skip with performative force, judged for distance, technique, and absurdity. But humour doesn’t dull the exhaustion. Disposal also takes energy. What’s tossed is rarely weightless. And what if we could calculate how much we’ve wasted - not just in money, but in time, care, and emotional effort? In their essay, they document the ritual, the repetition, and the slightest violence of throwing things away. The skip becomes a ledger. The receipt becomes critique. Read the full piece via the link in bio. ✍️ Isa Bascuñana & Ezgi Kaya Big thanks to Big Yellow Self Storage for your ongoing support!

There’s little time to reflect when art becomes a cycle of output, admin, and survival. The emotional residue builds, unfelt, until it reroutes elsewhere. Day by day, we sleep, we wake, we repeat — and in between, we dream. In sleep, the system slips. What’s been ignored to stay functional starts to scream. In The Morning Is Dangerous: Seven Dreams, Junshu Gu (@ikuulikki ) maps the artist’s anxiety in dream-form: surreal, disjointed, precise. These aren’t just dream fragments — they’re psychic infrastructures. Narratives the waking world has no time to hold. In the blur between metaphor and memory, dreams say what we edit out in daylight. They name what we spend all day avoiding. Read the full piece via the link in bio. ✍️ Junshu Gu

In contemporary art, many artists’ studios are no longer sacred. For many, it’s portable, precarious, dispersed. In her essay My Studio Used to Be Made Up of Several Bags, Carolin Meyer (@euro_kurd ) unpacks the spatial instability of artistic life -  art materials stored in drawers, tools scattered across shared tables, sculptures trapped in boxes under the bed. When space is a privilege, the act of making becomes an exercise in navigation. What is even more heartbroken is that: there is never a lack of space - only a lack of space for artists to sustain their work. The infrastructure exists. What’s missing is access, continuity, permission. Through personal archives and urban critique -  from Camberwell’s hostile interiors to Berlin’s chewing-gum monuments - Meyer maps a practice shaped by displacement and improvisation. Refusing to discard becomes a form of resistance. Accumulation becomes narrative. And the domestic becomes studio by force, not by choice. Read the full piece via the link in bio. ✍️ Carolin Meyer We wanna thank Big Yellow Self Storage Kings Cross for your long term storage support to DUMP and our emerging artist community. 💕💕💕

In contemporary art, trash is everywhere. When production budgets collapse, rubbish becomes a resource. Found objects, surplus matter, discarded images: these aren’t aesthetic choices so much as survival strategies. In her essay DE:TRASHIFICATION, Iris Su (@irrisirrisart ) argues that trash is not just material - it’s an ideological system. One that decides what is valuable and what is expendable. What is preserved and what is erased. And what we’re allowed to recover, if anything. Drawing from archival video, personal narrative, and political critique, Su positions trash as both metaphor and medium - a space where memory, class, race, and cultural production collide. “Trashification,” she suggests, is a lens through which to read systems of power. “De-trashification” is a practice of seeing otherwise.What happens when we stop cleaning up? When we sit with the mess? When do we treat trash not as failure, but as feedback? Read the full piece via the link in bio. ✍️ Iris Su

Rent vs Studio, Labour vs Leisure, Maintenance vs Meaning. In this art-making climate, Aoife Casby (@aoifecasby ) and Andrea Mason (@andreaemason ) offer a radical gesture toward continuity. Their concrete poetry is composed as infrastructural built from cultural compost: offcuts of language, aborted meaning, orphaned terms. In an art world obsessed with novelty and polish, this work insists on the beauty of what’s already been re/used. The repetition of courage. The calamity of consciousness. Read more at the link in bio. This essay is part of our first edition of DUMP Thoughts, following our recent open call. We’ve selected six contributions and all of them are now ready for read through our website page, link in bio! Expect to hear from: Aoife Casby and Andrea Mason (@aoifecasby @andreaemason ), Carolin Meyer (@euro_kurd ), Ezgi Kaya and Isa Bascuñana (@ezzzzzzgi @isabascunana ), Iris Su (@irrisirrisart ), Junshu Gu (@ikuulikki ), and Secondhand Affection aka Ari (@secondhandaffection ).

What does it mean to grow up in a space where creativity was quietly discouraged? In Mourning Intangibility, contributed by Secondhand Affection aka Ari (@secondhandaffection ), a deeply personal account unfolds - from childhood house rules to the pursuit of art, and a spontaneous clay offering left for strangers to find. The piece traces the emotional weight of making in a system - and a household - that equates creativity with waste. Read the full piece at the link in bio. This essay is part of our first edition of DUMP Thoughts, following our recent open call. We’ve selected six contributions that span a range of formats - from critical reflections to skip receipt - offering a glimpse into the untold emotional and material realities artists navigate. Expect to hear from: Aoife Casby and Andrea Mason (@aoifecasby @andreaemason ), Carolin Meyer (@euro_kurd ), Ezgi Kaya and Isa Bascuñana (@ezzzzzzgi @isabascunana ), Iris Su (@irrisirrisart ), Junshu Gu (@ikuulikki ), and Secondhand Affection aka Ari (@secondhandaffection ). All six pieces will be released online next week. Stay tuned. Big thanks to Big Yellow Self Storage(@bigyellowselfstorage ) for your ongoing support!