Private View - Messages from a Silent River

curated by Ground Collective

Hypha Gallery 2 / No. 1 Poultry, London EC2R 8EN

PV: Thursday, 6th November 2025, 6-9pm

Open: 7 November – 6 December 2025

Messages from a Silent River is a multi-disciplinary exhibition inspired by the lost course of the Walbrook River — once an open waterway in Roman London and now a silent presence beneath The City. The theme provides a lens for the artists of the Ground Collective to explore a range of ideas, from the city’s forgotten past to the urgent realities of the global climate crisis. The exhibition weaves together sculpture, painting, installation, printmaking and video, and is informed by walks taken in the area led by artist and mudlarker Mark Sowden, whose deep knowledge of artefacts found along the Thames foreshore inspired many of the artists’ research.

Some of the artists engage directly with the material presence and/or history of rivers, including Madi Acharya-Baskerville’s assemblages of river-found objects, which are intertwined with her South Asian heritage; Sam Hodge’s monotypes made from inks she makes from river materials; Jim Roseveare’s sculptural response to the encasement of streams; and Mark Sowden’s site-specific installation. Other works explore more poetic dimensions of the theme: Tracy Hill’s site specific drawing points to invisible landscapes, while Matthew Swift’s mixed-media installation imagines “inner rivers.” Tom Banks’s new paintings will respond to the broader area around 1 Poultry and the former path of the river, as will a text- based piece by poet Mike Sims. Finally, the exhibition confronts the ecological fragility of our waterways, with Joost Gerritsen’s elegiac film about a dried-up river and Marcia Teusink’s screenprinted scrolls looking at the pollution of rivers.

A communal workstation in the gallery will remain active throughout the exhibition, allowing artists to continue developing new works in conversation with the site’s histories and in conversation with visitors to the gallery. The artists will engage with different audiences through a local walk following the course of the Walbrook River with Mark Sowden, a demonstration of ink-making from found materials with Sam Hodge, and artists’ talks in the gallery.

artists

Madi Acharya-Baskerville
Tom Banks
Joost Gerristen

Sam Hodge
James Roseveare
Mike Sims

Mark Sowden
Matthew Swift
Marcia Teusink

Tracy Hill (guest artist)