Stanley Picker Gallery

FRAUD ‘A Simultaneous Agreement’ 23 April - 18 July Come to the gallery to see ‘A Simultaneous Agreement’ by FRAUD (Audrey Samson & Francisco Gallardo), whose latest body of work centres on the circulation of nutrients and infrastructures permeating the current UK water crisis. Examining the intimacy between the fertiliser mine and the treatment plant, the project asks, when minerals move across the earth what do they bring with them? Shown here is the glass fountain – ‘Saharan Rock, on Panamanian Soil, in South African Waters’ – which from the 15 May filters local Hogsmill River water with activated charcoal. The sculpture charts the recirculation of phosphate rock via the path of the NM Cherry Blossom – a bulk-carrier ship carrying contested phosphate rock from the Sahara to East Asia. In doing so, it traces sediments which build (and unbuild) worlds as they move from the shallow bench of the mine to the port warehouse and from South African tribunals to industrial farmland. The exhibition will host a consultation and public campaign to make the nearby Hogsmill River swimmable, using bathing request legislation as a tool for considering the intimacy with nutrients as pollutants, from their extraction and production to their re-circulation in water bodies (both human and non-human). Archival material in the exhibition – ‘An Atlas of P’ – also examines colonial legacies of phosphate. Included are early prospecting efforts by Spain in occupied Sahara Occidental, which held the world’s most concentrated phosphate deposits. Since 2004, most of materials displayed have been successively classified. Here, the ownership of visuals resources mirrors their raw counterpart. Far from being neutral representations, these images foreground the colonial logic embedded in visual regimes and denounce the historiographical invisibility of extractive architectures in Western Sahara and their enduring impact on land, waters, bodies, and sovereignty. Images: FRAUD ‘A Simultaneous Agreement’ at Stanley Picker Gallery, Kingston University 2026. Photo: Reece Straw @reecestraw @la_fraud @kingston.school.of.art @kingstonuniversity @aceagrams @inkingstonuk @conseilartscan

Join us this Friday 15 May 6-8pm for a Stanley Picker Gallery Late ‘Open Waters’ as part of Kingston Artists Open Studios @kaoskingston Come and celebrate the watery influences on the work of local artists, students and fellows and spend time after hours with the work of artists participating in the exhibitions across the gallery. We are bringing together Kingston-based artists in celebration of our open call exhibition ‘Open Waters’, which was selected by @la_fraud and is currently on view in our Project Studio. The 15 May also marks the start of the bathing season and connects to the local efforts to designate part of the Hogsmill River safe for swimming. In honour of the start of the bathing season it will be the first time to witness addition of water from the Hogsmill River to the glass fountain ‘Saharan Rock, on Panamanian Soil, in South African Waters’ which is part of FRAUDs current exhibition A Simultaneous Agreement. Stanley Picker Fellows FRAUD @la_fraud will introduce their exhibition and their research into phosphate mining and its remediation through activated charcoal. This evolving work operates as a spatial and critical design process, connecting the gallery to local ecologies. Join us for an evening of free drinks, conversation and reflections on water. @kingston.school.of.art @kingstonuniversity @aceagrams #bathingseason #phosphates #kingstonartists #kaos whatsoninkingston

We are excited to announce ‘Open Waters’, a group exhibition selected through open call in collaboration with Kingston Artists Open Studios @kaoskingston ‘Open Waters’ runs 9-16 May in the Stanley Picker Gallery Project Studio Tue-Sat 11am-5pm, and also 6-8pm on Fri 15 May for our special ‘Open Waters’ Late. Forming part of Kingston Artists Open Studios (KAOS) 2026, the exhibition presents work by over thirty local artists exploring our evolving and intimate relationships to water. Works span print, installation, painting, collage, photography, bookmaking, drawing and etching. Artists engage with local histories and ecologies, memories, ephemerality and undertake material investigations. These works by local artists bring our connections to rivers, seas, oceans, waterways, and swimming into the gallery. ‘Open Waters’ accompanies ‘A Simultaneous Agreement’ by Stanley Picker Fellows FRAUD @la_fraud and includes a wide selection of works from local artists, students and gallery partners. To celebrate KAOS, from 6-8pm on Friday 15 May we are hosting our next Stanley Picker Gallery Late, which is an opportunity for everyone to meet the artists, experience both exhibitions after hours and to see FRAUD’s fountain installation running with Hogsmill River water for the very first time. Artists include: Olga Bonitas, Ruth Bowey, Caroline Calascione, Jane Cradock-Watson, Leo Duff, Gerald Eccles, Maia Friedrich, Diane Gerrard, James Kaye Harris, Buffy Kimm, Bergina Leka, Emily Limna, Fiona Masterton, Ross McLeod, Loraine Monk, Roy West, Lyndsay Russell, Donna Shannon, Nicola Siebert-Patel, Sue Slaughter, Paul Smith, Kate Strupinski, Felicity Swan, Irina Taneva, Hanna Ten Doornkaat, Valerie Timmis, Richard Tomlin, Anna Topalova, Henny Turner, Jude Wild, Frank Wuggenig. Image captions in comments @kaoskingston @inkingstonuk @kingston.school.of.art @kingstonuniversity @kingston_nub_news @calascionecaroline @lyndsayrussell_mfa_fine_art @paulsmithart @artist.leoduff @payalroyw

The seventeenth RE: Design Residencies published text is by Martin Born ‘Production, Reproduction, and Residency Forms as Forms of Organising’. Having both organised and participated in residency programmes, ex-designer Martin Born was invited to share some of his thoughtful and provocative reflections from the previous two public forums. “To take it but as a historical coincidence that artist residencies bloomed in the ideological biotope of this “universalist” (neo)liberalism would be well-meaning – too snugly fits their operating mode with the credo of a free flow of ideas, goods, and people.” Visit the link in bio to read the full text online and more RE: Design Residencies texts on design and architecture residency and fellowship programmes. #re_design_residencies

The sixteenth RE: Design Residencies published text ’abRen’ by Rahel Shawl is an introduction and conversation with Magnus Ericson @magnus.ericson.se @iaspis.se outlining their ongoing residency collaboration. This collaboration between IASPIS and abRen/RAAS Architects was developed within the IASPIS programme of experimental pilot residencies, aimed at inquiring/exploring and testing new forms of international exchange within architecture and design. “When I started RAAS Architects, it became natural for me to open the doors to those who needed guidance, mentorship, and support in their professional work. It started with one-on-one mentorships; internship open-door policies at work that students and young architects could use the space for incubating ideas.” Visit the link in bio to read the full text online and more RE: Design Residencies texts on design and architecture residency and fellowship programmes. #re_design_residencies

Open Call: Stanley Picker Fellowships in Art & Design 2026 Application Deadline: Monday 29 June at 5pm (BST) Stanley Picker Gallery at Kingston University is seeking to appoint two contemporary practitioners to the Stanley Picker Fellowships in Art & Design. Each Fellowship provides up to £16,000 and valuable access to the extensive material workshops, technical resources and expertise within Kingston School of Art and the wider University, to support a practice-based, innovative research project that will result in an exhibition of international standing at Stanley Picker Gallery. For further information and application details see link in bio! #stanleypickerfellowships #opencallforartists #fellowshipcall #callforartists #callfordesigners opencall stanleypickerfellowship artistopportunity designopportunity @kingston.school.of.art @kingstonuniversity @aceagrams

Please join us for our next Hogsmill River Community Gathering on Tuesday 28 April from 5pm-7pm at the Stanley Picker Gallery, connected to our current exhibition ‘A Simultaneous Agreement’ by FRAUD @la_fraud Date: Tuesday 28 April Times: 5pm-7pm (arrival from 4.30pm) Venue: Stanley Picker Gallery All Welcome / Tea & Cake provided For this gathering we will be joined by professional choreographer and movement director Neus Gil Cortés @neus_gil_cortes_movement who will introduce the performance strand of the project - ‘Standing for the River’. There will be opportunities to learn more about the performance and about how you can get directly involved. If you haven’t attended one of these gatherings in the past there will be a chance to learn about the wider project and FRAUD’s plans to submit a bathing request to the Environment Agency to designate part of the river safe for swimming. In this session we will talk through any ideas you may have that could form part of the bathing request public consultation period, which takes place here from 16-20 June. We are hoping to host anything from river monitoring sessions to poetry workshops, we welcome each and every idea. Whilst this is the final community gathering facilitated by FRAUD themselves as part of their current Stanley Picker Fellowship, the Gallery’s programme of public events will continue to evolve. If anyone in your network would like to attend this or future events, please forward them this invitation, and ask them to get in touch with Madeleine Collie [email protected] We hope to see you here at the Gallery soon! @kingstonuniversity @kingston.school.of.art @aceagrams @biodiversityku @kingstonstudents @kingstonhive #swimmablerivers #kingston #community #chalkstreams #waterhealth

Join us for the opening of A Simultaneous Agreement, the latest body of work by Stanley Picker Fellows FRAUD (Audrey Samson & Francisco Gallardo). Launch Event Wed 22 April 2026 6-8pm / Free Drinks / All Welcome! The exhibition explores the hidden flows shaping the UK’s water crisis. Tracing the intimate link between the fertiliser mine and the treatment plant, the project asks: when minerals move across the earth, what do they bring with them? There are 4,929 bodies of water in England - all of which have been deemed unfit for both human and more-than-human life. Rivers like the Hogsmill, which flows alongside the Stanley Picker Gallery, are saturated with chemicals from agricultural run-off and sewage overflow. Water - the stuff of life - has become a carrier of unevenly distributed violence. Alongside a glass fountain that cleans Hogsmill River water with activated charcoal, archival material from the Bou Craa Mine in Western Sahara and wearable sculptures the exhibition hosts a consultation and public campaign to make the nearby Hogsmill River swimmable. The artists are using bathing request legislation as a tool for considering the intimacy with nutrients as pollutants, from their extraction and production to their re-circulation in water bodies (both human and more-than-human). FRAUD @la_fraud (Audrey Samson & Francisco Gallardo) is a duo which develop modes of art-led enquiry that examine the extractive gaze of the management of raw materials. Through their practice, FRAUD cultivate critical spatial literacy and cosmology building. Image: Frondicula fosfatica. As attested by the glassy exoskeletons of microfossils such as Frondicularia fosfatica, the northwest part of the African continent, which holds the majority of the world’s phosphate reserves, was originally part of the Atlantic seabed. Permission to display and reproduce the image was granted by Professor Pablo Rabasco (University of Cordoba); repositories of the research group GAMUC and the University of Seville, Spain. @kingston.school.of.art @kingstonuniversity @biodiversityku @aceagrams @kingstonhive #WaterCrisis #EnvironmentalArt #swimablerivers #UKRivers #EarthDay

Thank you to everyone who attended our most recent exhibition Attack Decay Sustain Release, Experiments in Sound with Sophie Huckfield, Nnena Kalu & Rebecca Kressley, Abbas Zahedi and more which closed with a final weekend of events on 26–28 March. Highlights were our first ever Stanley Picker Gallery Late, which saw sound making artists from the programme presenting compositions, collaborations with Kingston School of Art students, and improvised scores with useful objects. We also heard with sound making artists a talk hosted by sound curator and archivist @andreazarzacanova . We loved having the gallery open late, and filled with people and the artists’ and students sounds experiments to end the show. We co-hosted a symposium chaired by Kingston School of Art PhD candidate Lisa Slominski, @slominski_projects focusing on the cultural mediators that support artists such as Action Space artist Nnena Kalu to expand curatorial practice through coalition. It was brilliant to bring together diverse perspectives on institutional support for learning disabled artists. We held a final day drop-in for community, with Action Space artists producing artworks in response to the exhibition, and we visited Ian Wornast’s public mural A Journey Through Kingston. The exhibition was particularly well attended by SEND groups and supported studios who were hosted by our participation curator Jaime Young. The exhibition was documented over the nine weeks of expanded studio practice by Kingston School of Art BA Photography graduate Denis Colebourne @denis.colebourne Denis took a roll of black and white 35mm film each week and we exhibited one image from each week over the final weekend. The selected images are the ones you can see here! @andreazarzacanova @abbzah @sophiehuckfield @slominski_projects @actionspace @aceagrams @kingston.school.of.art @kingstonuniversity #expandedstudio #sound #sculpture #contemporanyart

The fifteenth RE: Design Residencies published text is by Gian Luca Amadei ’Residencies as a Pedagogical Tool in Creative Education: Why Should We Consider Them? Why Now? What Role Could They Have?’. “Having seen how the introduction of an artist’s studio worked in the context of a museum residency programme, I began to wonder what impact residencies might have if introduced into creative higher education. What would it mean if artists, external to the institution, were invited to carry out their practice at the very heart of a place like the Royal College of Art or Central Saint Martins?” Visit the link in bio to read the full text online and more RE: Design Residencies texts on design and architecture residency and fellowship programmes. #re_design_residencies

The fourteenth RE: Design Residencies published text is by Lou-Atessa Marcellin @louatessa ’PolyVocalCity’. Cultural producer, educator and researcher Marcellin was invited to share some of her experiences of working with experimental learning at Theatrum Mundi. “The programme adopts a non-hierarchical model for knowledge exchange, bringing together academic and lived experience. Participants learn from one another, alternatively becoming teachers and students. Through that process, a new kind of relationship emerges, one that is based on making with and a mutual respect gained by exposing each other’s strength and vulnerabilities.” Visit the link in bio to read the full text online and more RE: Design Residencies texts on design and architecture residency and fellowship programmes. #re_design_residencies Image: PolyVocalCity: Restaging Croyden, Saturday School, Quaker Hall, Croydon, 2023. Photo: Lou-Atessa Marcellin. Image courtesy of Theatrum Mundi

The thirteenth published RE: Design Residencies text is by Michael Marriott @instamarriott2.0 ‘You say Volvo, I say Potato...’. In the text Marriott provides a case study of a project conducted during a residency programme and attempts to understand and frame what might consititute research within this project. “The very act of taking part in a residency programme will typically throw those concerns in the air; possibly some will return as a plan is formed. Having a certain amount of free space and time to allow the development and forming of a plan is key.” Visit the link in bio to read the full text online and more RE: Design Residencies texts on design and architecture residency and fellowship programmes. #re_design_residencies Image: Disco Devil, installation view of You say Volvo, I say Potato, Stanley Picker Gallery, Kingston University, London, 2018. Photo: Corey Bartle-Sanderson