Date/Time
13th June 2026 - 14th June 2026
12:00pm - 5:00pm
Location
ArtWorks Project Space - Barbican Arts Group Trust
Categories
Barbican Arts Trust’s Blackhorse Lane Studios are excited to announce Small Prophets, a new group exhibition
coinciding with their annual Open Studios weekend, this year in association with the return of the Walthamstow
Art Trail.
On the weekend of 13th/14th May visitors can look around 25 artists’ studios at our 114a Blackhorse Lane site,
as well as this special exhibition of remarkably small art works in the ground-level ArtWorks Project Space.
Monumental art is often seen as the most valuable or significant, but this exhibition asks you to cherish the
small, brief gesture, encouraging you to peer in to examine the tiniest details. Curated by studio member Barry Sykes, Small Prophets presents an array of modestly sized paintings, drawings, photographs and sculptures scattered across the walls of our gallery space. Magnifying glasses and binoculars will be available. The exhibition is titled after the recent BBC television series of the same name, where a reclusive neighbour uses ancient alchemical methods to conjure up ‘homunculi’ – little, floating, fortune telling creatures – in his garden shed. As the first series concluded we are still left unsure what powers they may have, a parallel drawn to the works in this show, potent yet ambiguous, their scale preserving the mystery.
In the exhibition, Franki Austin’s small painting shows a butterfly on the verge of extinction; Helen Maurer’s
miniature glass house refracts light across the walls; and Turner Prize winner Jasleen Kaur’s suspended air
freshener infuses the room with the faintest smell.
Artworks can be viewed and purchased via: www.barbicanartsgrouptrust.co.uk/info.html