Gallery No.32

Andy Ash, 'try again fail again, fail better.' Andy Ash performed, try again, fail again, fail better, at The Opening Party of WINTER SCULPTURE PARK on 1 March. The work explored walking as an artistic practice - an inquiry into space, movement, and perception. Engaging with the history of the abandoned driving range, the performance investigated spatial judgment, bodily limits, and rule-breaking. Informed by walking through the South Downs, Brighton seafront, and city streets, it challenges conventional categorisation. Andy's flags of progress remain on site as part of the PARK.

Diana Zrnic, 'The Promise of Continuity'. Myth and reality intertwine within Diana Zrnic's work. Her repeating lexicon of characters, symbols and objects creates a visual language across each piece, continuing a story with every work she makes. For WINTER SCULPTURE PARK 2025, Diana has created a water feature. As the well-known faces return to bathe in sunlight, rain, wind and frost, they are refreshed by the gentle trickle of the fountain water, cleaning them for the next part of their tale.

Richard Mackness, 'To the four winds'. Richard works in dualities. Creating sculpture based on his observations of opposing theologies, ideals or qualities around him. Along the Thames, near WINTER SUCLPTURE PARK, sea containers wash ashore at Tilbury - modern icons of global trade. Beneath their corrugated steel cladding lie echoes of classical architecture, yet culture and identity are swept aside by consumerism’s relentless tide. Here Richard plays with shifting meanings: the ancient temple, the steel box, the overgrown remains of a former empire. Time and tide have transformed the container into stone; an abandoned tomb gazing out to sea. And for those curious enough to look inside, a secret answer awaits through the peep hole.

Helen Grant, 'Keepin' Up'. Helen produces over-familiar, redundant symbols that provocatively question their own worth. When first visiting the former golf course, she was struck by the sight of the wind turbines across the river to Dagenham, feeling an urge to wave back at them in the same endless motion; an impossibility. This sculpture is her way of realising that. Made from bright, colourful sheeting the pinwheel is at odds with the purposeful appearance of the turbines. It's futile, uncontrollable spinning is reflective of contemporary pressures felt to 'keep up' and appear busy and cheery, even when we feel quite the opposite.

Sophie Fishel, 'Drive Like a Girl'. Sophie works with metal, creating large scale sculptures that pass comment on observations she makes about the world and people around here. Here she pokes fun at the sexism she faced while driving cherry pickers and forklifts throughout her time working as a metal fabricator.

Liam Scully, 'Sh*t Heads'. Liam centres his artistic practice around the political, the personal and lowbrow trash culture; exploring how the three are inextricably linked. For WINTER SCULPTURE PARK he has created a series of political heads out of an organic material he has developed himself; ‘Crossness Cob’. The material uses incorporates a sewage byproduct from Crossness pumping station called ‘cake’ which is essentially the collective poo of all of South London, from Richmond to Thamesmead and is fitting to represent the political class. "They are shit heads made by our collective sh*t. We worship and despise them at the same time. These are effigies/idols literally made from our own ruin."

Lorrain Mailer, 'I will huff and I will puff'. A gleaming, elevated tiny house standing on steel legs wrapped in cascading compact discs that shimmer like scales. A construction that comments wryly on the design of housing today; is it fit for flooding? For extreme heat? For climate disaster? Stand inside and view glimpse of the CD era: a relic of consumer culture now polluting landfills. Lorrain uses this work to question the potential of discarded materials hold within everygrowing climate concern. Aptly placed within the flood planes of the Thames.

Jill Laudet, 'Decent Homes for All'. Based on the Thamesmead legacy, Jill has made a timely monument to the post-war aspirations of ‘decent homes for all’. A reflection on the Thamesmead Archive and the history and shaping of what was seen as the residential 'utopia' that surrounds us within the former golf course. The piece is a monument of reflection to the building of community throughout Thamesmead and its past, present and future residents.

Tom Witherick, 'Rope Swing'. Tom's practice indulges in fantasies; love affairs with fictional characters; magic rituals for reliving one’s youth; organic explosive devices for rewilding urban environments. Here, Tom takes inspiration from the Rococo style popular in 18th Century Europe and most notably, Jean-Honoré Fragonard’s painting 'The Swing' (1767). Rococo saw artists favouring more intimate mythological scenes, idyllic pastoral imagery, and light-hearted depictions of pleasure-seeking, a frivolous reaction to the formality of the earlier Baroque and Enlightenment periods. Fragonard's salacious painting can be seen as a perfect example of this departure, with the swing taking centre stage. Following on from Fragonard Tom's swing is a recreation of this scene in the modern world, set in the wake of the past calling on the memories of play within the former driving range space and looking out amongst the naturally rewilded world 258 years on.

Alexis Bamforth, 'Table: what's on your plate?' Alexis brings the ground to the table, raising the earth beneath it and revealing the segmented hollow left behind. A space both familiar and unfamiliar, it prompts the question, who will it be hosting? Are we the guests, or are there others already present? Soil, roots, microbes and rock fragments are present here, sustaining and shaping us. A quiet exchange across unfolds across, within and through the table - of matter, of histories, of shared resources. Table: What's on your plate? is a meeting place, a conversation between worlds seen and unseen.