Stanley Picker Gallery

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Stanley Picker Gallery Contemporary art and design gallery in SW London, staging free exhibitions, workshops, and events. The call for applications opens annually in May.

Stanley Picker Gallery at Kingston University is one of the leading university galleries and commissioning venues in the UK, working with artists, designers, students, academics and members of the local community to encourage creativity, learning, research and innovation. Established in 1997 with the ongoing support of the Stanley Picker Trust, the Gallery forms part of Arts Council England’s National Portfolio and is a principal cultural interface between Kingston University and its civic communities in South-West London and beyond. From its island location on the Hogsmill River, our venue is a creative hub, a production site and a presentation space that functions as an “expanded studio” dedicated to commissioning and curating contemporary art and design practice, generating a dynamic programme of exhibitions, events and participation activities staged onsite, offsite and online. Appointed each year through public open call, our Stanley Picker Fellowships in Design and Fine Art support a diversity of contemporary practitioners to research, create and premiere ambitious new work, by providing generous grants, free studio space, professional expertise and valuable access to the world-class workshop facilities at Kingston School of Art. Our Participation Programme involves us working collaboratively with schools, colleges, community groups and local residents of all ages, to deliver a range of creative activities and shared learning and professional development opportunities for students, that engage everyone in the life of the Gallery, our partner venue Dorich House Museum and the wider University. Follow us Twitter , Instagram and sign up to our mailing list via our website for the latest updates on the programme, and to receive invitations and newsletter on our activities and how to get involved.

Join us at the gallery for The Plan and The Play an afternoon of stories, discussion and exploration around the exhibiti...
06/10/2026

Join us at the gallery for The Plan and The Play an afternoon of stories, discussion and exploration around the exhibition A Socially Useful Production: “The Participation Waltz”.

Saturday 17 October / 1-4pm / Free / Book via Eventbrite / Tea, coffee and snacks will be served.

We will be joined by Kathleen McCreery, co-writer and director of the play The Participation Waltz and co-founder of Broadside Mobile Workers Theatre; Phil Asquith, one of three surviving members of the Lucas Aerospace Combine Shop Stewards’ Committee and one of the authors of the Lucas Plan; and artist Sophie Huckfield.

Together, we will walk through the exhibition, look through archival materials and share stories from the Lucas Plan and The Participation Waltz. The afternoon will explore the connections between these two histories, the struggles to imagine and bring alternative worlds into being, and the legacies of the Lucas Plan in the 50 years since it was written.

Bring along your own stories and personal archives of Kingston’s aviation industries, experiences of organising against militarisation, or connections to the Lucas Plan and radical theatre. There will be space for conversation and discussion, and for sharing memories, ideas and reflections with everyone who attends.

This event is part of Sophie Huckfield’s Stanley Picker Fellowship exhibition A Socially Useful Production: “The Participation Waltz” which runs from 19 September – 19 December 2026.

To book for this event visit the link in our bio.


Kingston University
Kingston School of Art
Arts Council England

16/09/2026
03/09/2026

We are very excited to announce Bugarin + Castle and Harun Morrison have been appointed to the Stanley Picker Fellowships in Art & Design 2026.

Selected through public open call from over 350 applications, this year's selection panel included British Council Director of Architecture, Design & Fashion Sevra Davis, Stanley Picker Gallery Curator Madeleine Collie and Gallery Director David Falkner.

Bugarin + Castle (Davide Bugarin and Angel Cohn Castle) bring architectural research into collision with the unruly immediacy of cabaret. Recent projects investigate shaming parades, cross-dressing as punishment, and cries of Filipino aswang shapeshifters to explore the spatial politics of sound, thresholds and public spectacles. Their research-led works ricochet through archival histories and contemporary q***r and trans experience: from medieval public mocking and colonial-era noise laws in Manila North Cemetery to voice feminisation and sound permeating through walls.

Harun Morrison is an artist and writer based in London and a former associate artist with Greenpeace UK on the project Bad Taste. Last year Harun showed work in the Brent Biennial 2025: Bones, stones and calling the four elements. He recently presented work in the group show, SOIL: The World at Our Feet. In 2024, he was in the two person show, DONO, at Somerset House Studios project space G31 alongside Appau Jnr Boakye-Yiadom and the solo show Conjunction at VOLT, Devonshire Collective in Eastbourne.

Visit our website for information on these and all our previous Stanley Picker Fellowship recipients.


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Images: Bugarin + Castle 'Nocturnal Amusements' (2026) installation view at Venice Biennale 2026. Courtesy the Artists and Scotland + Venice / Harun Morrison 'Crocodile-on-a-Log Cap' (2022) Horseman Museum. Photo James Allan.

We are excited to announce our next exhibition. Sophie Huckfield & Company presents A Socially Useful Production: “The P...
03/09/2026

We are excited to announce our next exhibition.

Sophie Huckfield & Company presents A Socially Useful Production: “The Participation Waltz”

Open from 19 September - 19 December 2026

We will be hosting a launch event on Friday 18 September 6-8pm with a special performance by socialist magician Ian Saville.

FREE / All Welcome

A Socially Useful Production: “The Participation Waltz” begins with The Lucas Plan, a radical proposal developed by workers at Lucas Industries in the UK in 1976 and was nominated for a Nobel Prize.

Lucas Industries was a manufacturer with multiple sites across the UK. By the 1970’s the workers possessed specialised technical knowledge which was directed towards the design and manufacture military equipment used overseas and funded by UK tax payers. In response to what they experienced as a decline in working and living conditions, and an ideological disconnect with the company’s changing end products, the workers at Lucas Aerospace developed what became known as The Plan, which proposed that engineers and workers should have a meaningful role in determining what was produced and how. Rather than accepting technology as something that progresses independently of society, workers argued that the technologies and systems we make are shaped by social choices, and that those choices should be more democratic. 

During the plan’s inception, the play “The Participation Waltz” was developed with Lucas workers by Broadside Mobile Workers Theatre. The play was performed in factories, picket lines, car parks and community halls and explored the “many dilemmas faced by these highly skilled workers: cancellation of projects, perennial redundancies, having to work on military rather than socially useful products”.

This collaborative exhibition transforms the gallery into a space for making, gathering and performance, in which the mechanics of work and decision making are revealed and the histories of worker movements and radical theatre can be revisited, with alternative scenarios tested, scripts rewritten, objects remade and the play restaged.

Kingston School of Art
Kingston University
Arts Council England

03/07/2026

Final weeks to visit FRAUD's Stanley Picker Fellowship exhibition 'A Simultaneous Agreement' which closes Saturday 18 July.

FRAUD's (Audrey Samson and Francisco Gallardo) latest body of work centres on the circulation of nutrients and infrastructures permeating the current UK water crisis.

Shown here is the glass fountain – ‘Saharan Rock, on Panamanian Soil, in South African Waters’ – which is currently filtering 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.

Exhibition Open / Tuesday - Saturday 11am-5pm
FREE Entry

Join us this week for a series of free public events exploring the future of the Hogsmill River as part of FRAUD’s exhib...
14/06/2026

Join us this week for a series of free public events exploring the future of the Hogsmill River as part of FRAUD’s exhibition A Simultaneous Agreement at Stanley Picker Gallery.

From community conversations, walks, screenings and creative actions the programme brings together artists, local residents, environmental groups, researchers and river advocates to imagine new ways of caring for the Hogsmill and to support the campaign for cleaner, swimmable waters.

Programme highlights:

💧 Public Consultation Space
Drop in throughout the week to share stories, memories and experiences of the Hogsmill River with Your testimony will contribute to the growing campaign for cleaner waters and greater public access via the bathing request application.

🚶 River Walks & Conversations
Walk alongside the Hogsmill with artists, ecologists and community members, exploring the river’s histories, challenges and possibilities.

🎬 Screenings & Workshops
Join us for talks and workshops that consider rivers, pollution, access and environmental justice and explore creative action as a form of counter bureaucracy. We are hosting a special screening of the people’s emergency briefing with Kingston Borough Council as part of London Climate Action week 2026 London Climate Action Week

The Hogsmill River has long been part of Kingston’s cultural and ecological life. This week’s events invite everyone to take part in shaping its future.

📍 Stanley Picker Gallery, Kingston
📅 This week, events take place daily
🎟 Free and open to all

Find the full programme on the events pages of the gallery website and join us
https://www.stanleypickergallery.org/programme/hogsmill-community-programme/



Images: Damselfly on the Hogsmill, Plant workshop with Angela Ford, Textile by Dominique Bailey-Boahene, Water Vole walk with Elliot Newton, Poetry by Henny Turner, Waste Water Treatment Plant with Laura Nee

Kingston School of Art
Kingston Council
Kingston University
Arts Council England

13/06/2026

There's still time to apply to our open call to the Stanley Picker Fellowships in Art & Design 2026.

Application Deadline: Monday 29 June at 5pm (BST)

The Stanley Picker Gallery at Kingston University is seeking to appoint two contemporary practitioners to the Stanley Picker Fellowships.

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.

Images from Stanley Picker Fellowships:
Current Exhibition: FRAUD 'A Simultaneous Agreement' (2026) Open until Sat 18 July 2026
The Decorators 'Portal Tables' (2022)
Davinia-Ann Robinson 'Through An Embodied Practice of Stillness' (2025)
Yemi Awosile 'Orishirishi' (2017)
Fabien Capello 'Streetscape' (2015)
Debora Delmar 'Trust' (2025)

For further information and application details see link in bio!

opencall stanleypickerfellowship artistopportunity designopportunity

10/06/2026

📣 Final days for Kingston Univeristy students to apply

Deadline: Friday 12 June at 12pm

Stanley Picker Gallery and Dorich House Museum at Kingston University are recruiting new Museum & Gallery Assistants for the 2026/27 academic year.

Our Museum & Gallery Assistant programme supports students to gain professional development skills within arts venues while studying. Assistants play a vital role in our day-to-day operations, including helping with front of house duties, room invigilating, public events and exhibition installation. New applicants must be current Kingston University students for the 2026/27 academic year.

Download a full Job Description and Application Form to apply via the link in our bio 🔗

If you have any questions or would like further assistance completing your application, please email us or visit to speak to a member of the Gallery or Museum team.

Reel designed and created by current Museum & Gallery Assistant Clarissa Kumala
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.ksa.photography

Address

Stanley Picker Gallery
Kingston Upon Thames
KT1

Opening Hours

Tuesday 11am - 5pm
Wednesday 11am - 5pm
Thursday 11am - 5pm
Friday 11am - 5pm
Saturday 11am - 5pm

Telephone

+442084174074

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