27/08/2026
We are pleased to announce our next exhibition, I am black because I come from the earth’s inside, by Zivarna Murphy ( Dr. Zivarna Murphy - Zivarna Murphy Ceramics )
This new commission is an invitation to enter an alternatively conceived shell grotto: a space for considering how this architectural form might be reclaimed and imagined otherwise.
Ornamental sites of display, wealth and status, shell grottoes became fashionable within British estates and gardens during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Often shaped by women whose labour went largely unrecorded, these spaces are entangled with notions of class, gender and Britishness. Murphy enters this layered history through making, re-forming the grotto with locally gathered boulder clay, hand-formed ceramics, and sculptural weaving.
Taking its form from the cave, the grotto carries deep associations with retreat, ritual, and transformation. Moving between the histories held in the grotto and her own experience, Murphy approaches making as a process of discovery, through which the grotto can be encountered anew.
Since March 2026, Zivarna Murphy has been supported as part of Holding Space, a studio residency at Juice Studios ( Juice Studios ). The residency provided an artist working in Hull, who would otherwise not have access to a studio, with seven months of cost-covered studio space and dedicated time to develop and expand their creative practice. Zivarna’s residency culminates in this presentation of work.
* The title of this exhibition is taken from the Audre Lorde poem ‘Coal’.
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