2025
Thick Smoke What happens when a visual artist nearly loses their sight? Shock. A shapeless void. Cataracts causing hazy vision, detached retina, black clouds, swirling floaters, flashes like an old movie, all happening suddenly. No warning. Two eyes in one body giving a different view and feeding different information to the brain. The brain attempts to catch up with the changes and make sense of the new way of seeing the world. Hallucinations...when our eyes lie to us. How do we respond when what we believe is fundamental to our identity is under threat? When does a setback become a gift? Setting out to consider these questions, the experience of seeing and not seeing becomes the central story of Thick Smoke. This Spud experimental exhibition has provided an opportunity to share the experience of making work through this significant period. This is the second collaboration by Barbara J Graham and Will S Woods, who began working together in 2024 after meeting at ‘a space’, Arches Studios in Southampton. Barbara has recently received an Arts Council Grant to further develop her practice, and Will is completing an MA in curating. For Thick Smoke, Barbara paints on natural and artificial surfaces to unpack how the world can be simultaneously in and out of focus. In response, Will’s film and soundscape echo the visual and psychological themes of these works. Barbara reflects: 'In February 2024, the retina in my right eye became detached without warning, and my vision was permanently changed. Since then, I've had two surgeries and months of convalescence during which my eye has at times been bionically powerful, totally blind, or more often somewhere in between. Consistency is lost, colours change; different focal ranges in each eye create a vision that is simultaneously sharp and blurred. I have flashes and floaters, ocular migraines, blind spots, double vision, and hallucinations: a constant mix of what I see in the world and what I see within my eye. My painting practice must now adapt daily to my ever-changing eyesight. Yesterday's work looks different today; seeing close-up or from a distance only provides a partial picture. To deal with this, I've created a studio space crammed with canvases on every surface, which I work on simultaneously, so there's always something I can see that feels okay. Nothing is stable; nothing is finished. My eye will require more surgery soon, and the paintings, like my eyesight, will continue to change.'
Coming Home: A Sacred Journey Through Queerness This exhibition explores the deeply personal and universal experience of coming home to ourselves, and the sacred journey that this represents for queer people. How do we nurture a sense of safety and growth on this path? How does that experience shift depending on where we come from? These powerful questions have emerged through meaningful connections with young people from the New Forest. In conversations about identity and queerness, one recurring theme stood out to me, the profound importance of safety, and how deeply this sense of safety is shaped by our environments: our families, our communities, our cultures, and our landscapes. These insights sparked several threads of inquiry, all which weave through this body of work. This collection is both a reflection and a response to those questions. It is rooted in the understanding that we are all connected, and that we are all part of nature. As queer people, we often carry an entire world within us, a world built from both resilience and beauty. We carry our soul home wherever we go. The symbol of the shell (our shelter, our home) became central to this work. It speaks to choice, identity, and belonging. The snail, a sacred and often overlooked creature, reminds us of these truths. Its spiral shell, constantly unfolding, symbolizes the eternal journey of self-discovery and growth. As a hermaphrodite, the snail also offers a powerful reminder that queerness exists in nature — it is natural, beautiful, and it is ever-present. The golden shells created for this exhibition are a celebration of identity, transformation, and the personal sanctuary we build within ourselves. They represent our uniqueness, our worth, and the sacredness of our stories. We are all gold. We are all worthy. And we all deserve to feel at home. Bio Mister Samo is an artist, transgender educator, and street art pioneer from Southsea. Over six years ago, Samo began his transition and has since channelled his personal journey into powerful, emotive artwork. His pieces serve as a form of non-verbal communication—raw visual diaries that explore the evolving relationship between body and mind. As a queer artist, Samo’s work focuses on interpreting the human condition and sharing lived perspectives. His message is clear and consistent: ‘embrace your true self, raise awareness, and nurture a cycle of gratitude and giving back to strengthen the fabric of community.’ A prominent figure in the street art and paint jam scene, Samo was honoured as a sponsored artist at World Pride in New York. His first book, I EXIST, is a celebration of transgender bodies through art—a joyful and defiant affirmation of identity. He continues to paint large-scale murals that bring visibility, pride, and acceptance to the trans community. In the past year, Samo was the headline artist at Upfest, Europe’s largest street art festival, and has since received numerous commissions aligned with the powerful message he carries forward. https://www.instagram.com/mister.samo/
New Forest Collage Radio Community radio represents place, diversity, inclusivity, independence, and a grass roots/DIY ethos. Among other things, it can connect people, disseminate information, champion local arts, and be a platform for underrepresented or alternative voices. But what is the function and format of community radio in view of the ever-increasing globalisation and digitalisation of the media? How can we play with the plasticity of the radio format to explore the social, symbolic and material spaces of broadcast? In what ways can an historical place like the New Forest be broadcast? These questions are explored by West Australian artists Em Burrows and Jeremy Segal in their work New Forest Collage Radio; a spatial radio station broadcasting sounds recorded in and around the New Forest in October 2025. Visitors are invited to pick up a hand-held radio and explore the field. Em Burrows and Jeremy Segal are West Australian artists who work predominantly with music, sound, and radio. They are currently based in Berlin. New Forest Collage Radio is a spatial radio station broadcasting sounds recorded in and around the New Forest in October 2025. Pick up a hand-held radio and explore the field. With thanks to Bridget Eastman, Gabriela Cohen, Angus Harley, Steve Adams & Sarah Fargher, Catie Lake, Chris Hopgood & Folk Orc, Mark Drury, Lisa Gardner, Estelle Phillips, Robbie Steen, Hannah Mae Buckingham, Joe Muggs, Roanna Schneider and Jim Mitchell.
Reflections of the Land A thought-provoking exhibition, challenging their own perceptions of their practice, through people, place and time. The narrative is captured through physical approaches to making, materials qualities and curation. Concepts, process, and inspirations echo one another through scale, sensitivity to materials, a muted palette and questioning the limitations of their respective mediums. Through quiet contemplation, walking, foraging, and making, five invite the Sway community to collaborate in this curatorial exhibition responding to its landscape. Through this work they aim to challenge, question, and provoke a response in the viewer through the physical act of making. “Paths are the habits of a landscape. They are acts of consensual making. It's hard to create a footpath on your own...Paths connect.” -Robert Macfarlane, The Old Ways: A Journey on Foot. Bio: The Five Collective Five is a female collective based in Hampshire connected through collaborative and individual research, drawing upon the notions of people, place and time. Exemplifying exceptional skills in their specialism, demonstrating a wealth of professional experience within the creative art fields; they aim to challenge not only their respective mediums but question the perception of textiles as a craft through contemporary reflective practice.
The Nightjar Project The Nightjar Project draws inspiration from this elusive nocturnal bird and its migration to investigate ideas of movement and homeland, between West Africa, Ghana and the UK. The project takes the rich narrative of migration, folklore, and the particularity of the Nightjar to consider life living under two skies. It will examine cultural and historically views and share stories of land management. It brings together a group of creative, educational and environmental organisations to explore these questions. African Activities and SPUD, supported by the New Forest National Park Authority and New Forest District Council, set out to define the possibilities of creative conversations between these communities. Their aim is to invite us all to think of belonging to places and groups. How we work and live alongside each other and to share our stories of belonging. This is planned as a two-year project, and to set the agenda for further discussions we are starting with an exhibition by Kwame Bakoji-Hume with multiple workshops in storytelling and environmental creativity. This will include a series of ‘Sound Scrapes’ from Ghana and a commissioning of a film by the artist James Elliot looking at land management. The Nightjar Project: Tell Us a Story About Belonging Ghanaian artist, musician and community leader, Kwame Bakoji-Hume, is creating an exhibition of works that shares his story. From his early childhood in Ghana, though building his ‘family’ in a children’s home, migration and how he fits into the bigger picture of dual homelands and being part of an African diaspora in the New Forest, living under two skies. The exhibition is full of symbolic language, embedded storytelling and interpretation within his painting and sculptural works. It’s the excitement of storytelling as a living craft of oral cultures that can tell the story of historic and contemporary ideas of belonging. Within the exhibition we want to invite people to tell their story of belonging, as we build a body of individual stories. From the questions that arise from Kwame’s work and audience responses further work and discussions will be sparked. Kwame Bakoji-Hume’s practice moves fluidly between painting, sculpture, music, community-based arts, and cultural storytelling, exploring themes of identity, belonging, and the interplay between gain and loss. His early life shaped an intimate understanding of impermanence, having left his family at the age of nine to live at the SOS Children’s Village, only to later risk everything as a teenager to reunite with his mother. These formative experiences inform his art, which celebrates resilience, collective joy, and the beauty of shared creativity. Relocating to the UK in 2000, Kwame founded African Activities CIC, a platform for using art to uplift communities and disrupt stereotypes about African cultures. His practice remains deeply rooted in community engagement, collaborating with craftsmen, children, and marginalized groups alike to democratize creativity and celebrate cultural heritage.
Clay Clay is a joint curatorial project between the Arches Studios in Southampton and SPUD Artists Studios. The choice of a simple base material with a huge creative and utilitarian history was to give scope to a wide-ranging group of artists who work in many different mediums; something to coalesce around, discuss, respond to and discover anew. We hope that for the viewer who comes to see this show it is a stimulating introduction to all the artists who are taking part. By exploring the singularity of clay, we hope to accentuate and articulate the individuality of an artist’s creative response, to see their reactions to the material question through the links they build. There is a secondary part to this exhibition. As each work is brought into the space it is allotted a place on the back wall to be stored, or at least exhibited as a stored thing for the public to explore. As you can see there are countless possibilities when looking at work ready for showing. There are many links to make. Some are formal, some are political, some are about process or social use. What groups might you put together in your head? What works ‘talk’ to each other, what conversations do you want to follow? For the duration of this show we have invited all the artists represented here to find their connections within the stored work. They will, over the month of Clay, be curating different shows in the rest of the gallery space, returning work to the shelves they don’t need and reworking conversations they see within the stored responses. Bringing fresh work out and reinterpreting what they understand. This is an exhibition that you need to keep coming back to, seeing the possibilities that might otherwise be left unseen. Curated by Tom Hall
The Caterpillar's World Title - The Caterpillar's World Medium: Installation, Sound, Film Materials: Reindeer Moss, The husks of the Corylus Colurna, and mixed media I envision transforming the gallery into an immersive, fantastical realm inspired by the enchanting world of caterpillars. These often-overlooked creatures inhabit a hidden, mysterious underworld just beneath our feet — a space rich with texture, movement, and quiet magic seldom seen up close. By inviting visitors into this microcosm, I aim to create a transformative experience that shifts their perspective, immersing them in a miniature world where unfamiliar landscapes take on larger-than-life dimensions. Caterpillars are rich in symbolism, representing transformation, growth, patience, and potential. Their journey embodies the process of change and becoming, as they undergo a remarkable metamorphosis from humble larvae to beautiful butterflies or moths. To bring this vision to life, I will create a large-scale caterpillar sculpture from natural materials that capture the earthy textures and colours of a caterpillar’s habitat. This sculpture will be set within a lush, organic environment, allowing visitors to explore a realm that feels both surreal and deeply rooted in nature. The space will be further enlivened with immersive soundscapes bringing the gallery to life and inviting guests to experience the caterpillar’s journey in a world that celebrates growth, transformation, and the beauty of life on a smaller scale. Through this installation, I hope to foster playful interaction and introspection, encouraging visitors to reflect on their journeys of growth and change while deepening their connection to the natural world. Artist Statement: Light’s practice moves between sculpture, performance, and moving images, focusing on the intricate relationship between humans and the natural world. Her ongoing exploration of belonging and discovering her place in the world leads her to recognize that we are an integral part of nature. Through her work, she explores how human existence is deeply intertwined with nature, examining how we both shape and are shaped by our environment. This idea of unity with the natural world is central to her work. Audiences are invited to witness the human seamlessly merging with the natural world, creating a collective 'we-world' that transcends societal divisions and offers an inclusive space where everyone feels a sense of belonging. By freeing herself from societal norms, Light delves into the essence of humanity and our place in the universe. Nature serves as an abundant source of inspiration for Light, driving her to envision a future where we harmonize with the natural world. She aims to inspire others to coexist with nature and work towards a brighter future. Through her art, Light sparks conversations about our relationship with nature, the essence of identity, and the accessibility of art to all. Light's live performances in public places aim to integrate art into everyday life, providing access for ordinary people and passersby who may otherwise be unable to experience the arts due to financial or other barriers that prevent them from visiting galleries Bio: Olana Light is a multidisciplinary artist based in Portsmouth, Hampshire, UK. She has an MA from Goldsmiths (2020) and a BA from Southampton Solent University (2017). Recent awards include the ArtCabbage Prize(2024), Bute Festival Thameslink Award (2024), Every Breath We Take Award (2024), Arts Council England DYCP (2024), CAS Emerging Sculptors Award (2023), Southampton City Gallery Billboard Commission (2023); Arts Council England National Lottery Project Grant (2022 and 2021); Blue Sky Ideas Art&Heritage Award (2022); StreetLife&Aesthetica Changing Rooms Commission Prize (2022); SpudOPEN Judge’s and Public Choice Award (2022); The Spring Open Competition Award (2022); the Little Forest Open Competition (2022); ‘a space’ arts Lucky Dip Bursary (2021); Zealous Stories Sculpture (2021); Sunny Art Prize Award (2020); and the Goldsmiths International Response Scholarship Award (2017). Olana has completed residencies at the Hugo Burge Foundation in Scotland (2024), La Vista in Tenerife (2023), EcoSuites in Greece (2022); School of Design and Fashion in Southampton (2019); Aspex Gallery in Portsmouth (2017 and 2018); Sticks Gallery in Fareham (2017). Recent publications include Permaculture, Ludvig Rage, Inside Artist, and Trebuchet.
