Elise Sawell, Casper Plum, Stacey Collee and Lidia Byrne

5 - 27 March 2026
Opening celebration: Thursday 5 March, 5-7pm

The bedroom is as fatal as it is vital, The Arena, responds to inextricable themes of intimacy, desire, dreams, sexuality and memory within the site of the bedroom. The bed represents a variety of contradictions, (public / private) (Subconscious / unconscious) whilst retaining its power as a site of transformation and even political revolt. The exhibition The Arena is confessional; an exploration into the rituals that begin within the private, thus collapsing the public space of the art gallery with evocations of the artists' (domestic) interiors. We pay tribute to Tracey Emin’s My Bed 1998 and Felix Gonzalez’s Untitled (billboard of an empty bed) 1991. Over the last decades, such artists have become champions of queer and feminist critical thinking. Through our exhibition The Arena, we respond to these histories, and participate in collective encounters of queerness, grief, desire and respite.

The Arena invites together artists: Elise Sawell, Casper Plum, Stacey Collee and Lidia Byrne whose individual practices traverse sculpture, photography, painting and performance. The four artists respond to the site of the bedroom and examine symbolic associations with the bedroom, engaging with shared themes of desire, grief, memory and intimacy. The artists use different mediums to portray images and feelings associated with their own bedrooms.