A new exhibition ‘The Ground Beneath: Material Memory and the Resilience of Hope’ at Messums London explores how ordinary, often discarded materials can carry emotional, cultural, and political weight. All of the artists are of Black and African diasporic heritage and work across sculpture, installation, painting, and performance.
A new exhibition ‘The Ground Beneath: Material Memory and the Resilience of Hope’ at Messums London explores how ordinary, often discarded materials can carry emotional, cultural, and political weight. All of the artists are of Black and African diasporic heritage and work across sculpture, installation, painting, and performance.
Featured artists are Temitope Adebowale, Motunrayo Akinola, Sonia Elizabeth Barrett, Shirley Nette Williams, Irvin Pascal, Camille Provost, and Justin Randolph Thompson.
Through instinctive and culturally rooted approaches, the artists reclaim and rework materials such as cardboard, wood, hemp, ceramic tile, shoe polish, and natural fibres – substances often overlooked or dismissed after prior use. A discarded object becomes a point of connection; a fragment becomes a site of inquiry; a humble substance becomes a tool for resistance.
Opening 8 October 2025 and coinciding with Frieze Week (15–19 October), the exhibition inaugurates the curatorial vision of Associate Director Lisa Anderson and marks a new direction for Messums London’s emerging art programme, one shaped by material experimentation, cultural memory, and a globally attuned perspective.
The Ground Beneath Exhibition
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