Folded Realities

Folded Realities unfolds a vibrant world where stories take shape through ink, paper, and imagination. Presented by Aire Place Studios in collaboration with Zineophelia, the exhibition brings together artists working across zines, comics, illustration, and print to explore how images can twist, stretch, and fold our sense of what’s real.

Zines are an impermanent medium, made to be shared, passed on, and remade. To complete their full definition, they must be disseminated; they are not just publications but acts of communication. The culture comes first, and zines follow. Folded Realities is a snapshot of that culture: zines frozen in time, communicating live en masse. This exhibition becomes a kind of time capsule, a report on where zine culture stands right now, where it has come from, and where it’s heading next.

From hand-drawn narratives and experimental sequences to bold, graphic storytelling, each piece invites viewers to step into a different perspective, where humour meets politics, abstraction meets emotion, and reality blurs into invention.

Alongside the exhibition, Zineophelia will be hosting a lively programme of zine-making workshops and creative events, inviting visitors to cut, fold, and create their own stories. Folded Realities celebrates the power of DIY publishing, the intimacy of print, and the ever-evolving culture of storytelling through image and sequence.

This exhibition is supported and funded by the People's Postcode Lottery.