Launch date: Friday 20 June 2025, 3:30–5pm
Exhibition dates: 21 June – 31 August 2025
Opening times: 11am–7pm* (except Mondays)
*Also check venue website for other closure days
EXHIBITION INFORMATION
The Meeting Place of Unveiled Worlds is an exhibition in Japan curated by Jennifer Gilbert focusing on eleven artists from the UK. Across two rooms, the exhibition fuses a mix of artists working across different mediums, showcasing emerging alongside seasoned British artists including two long established in the Art Brut world, Madge Gill and Scottie Wilson. Although having passed, Madge Gill’s work is currently gaining much recognition today, following its appearance in the 2024 Venice Biennale. The first room spotlights monochrome artworks. The works of Nigel Kingsbury, Tirzah Mileham and Madge Gill focus on the female form and mark making, whilst Cathy Ward, Cara Macwilliam and Terence Wilde create wispy, ethereal, organic shapes and lines, with Wilde and Macwilliam using the medium of clay. Andrew Johnston’s love of animals appears in detailed illustrations with layered marks, as well as ceramics.
The second room pays homage to colour with bright, vivid works challenging your imagination, inviting closer inspection. Jesse James Nagel’s work is a riot of colour with many disjointed, surreal ideas mingling together, Cameron Morgan’s colourful ceramics reveals his true love of the camera, and Valerie Potter’s vibrant cross-stitch work ties together faces, animals, plants, love, and non-religious gods. Scottie Wilson’s work uses more muted shades, creating dreamlike creatures and botanical forms, representing the eternal struggle between good and evil.
Exhibiting artists: Madge Gill, Andrew Johnstone, Nigel Kingsbury, Cara Macwilliam, Tirzah Mileham, Cameron Morgan, Jesse James Nagel, Valerie Potter, Cathy Ward, Terence Wilde, and Scottie Wilson
Access objects in the space: Easy Read guides in English and in Japanese, touch pieces from four artists (see photo below), videos to hear directly from the artists with English and Japanese captions, a Japanese sign language video about the exhibition, large print labels, books related to this field of art, wall panels about four disability art studios in the UK that four exhibiting artists work from.
Installation photos above from KAKISHIMA Tatsuro. Courtesy of Tokyo Shibuya Koen-dori Gallery'
EVENTS
Saturday 21 June – 3-4:30pm – Talk with curator Jennifer Gilbert
Jennifer will talk about the exhibition, but also about the disability art field in the UK, and how outsider art is perceived there. The talk will be in English, but Japanese and Japanese sign language is provided.
Click here to book a free place on this talk.
Sunday 22 June – 2-3pm – Exhibition tour with curator Jennifer Gilbert
Jennifer will give a guided tour of the exhibition, giving a little more information about each artist as you tour the venue together. The tour will be in English, but Japanese and Japanese sign language is provided.
This is a free event, please just turn up, no registration is required.
Friday 22 August – 7:30-8:30pm - Evening Entrance
This event offers a relaxed opportunity to view the exhibition in the evening. Visitors can enjoy the artworks at a slower pace, while casually chatting with a curator from the Gallery.
This is a free event, please just turn up, no registration is required.
The venue has step-free access. For further access information, please click here.
ABOUT EACH ARTIST
Madge Gill (1882-1961) is recognised as Britain’s most famous female Art Brut artist. Her distinctive ink drawings, featuring mysterious female faces floating within intricately patterned backgrounds, began in 1920, driven by an instinctive compulsion to create. She believed she was guided by a spirit named ‘Myrninerest,’ resulting in a prolific outpouring of mediumistic art produced automatically. Gill worked on a range of mediums, from vast swathes of calico to postcards and pieces of cardboard.
Nigel Kingsbury (1949-2016) had a fascination with the female form and, using his unique style of mark making, he produced fine, delicate portraits of women as mystical goddesses attired in glamorous ball gowns, decadent outfits, and floating dresses each possessing an almost ethereal quality. The initial figure would often be nude, he would then add folds of fabric created using layers of finely sketched lines. His drawings were of women who inspired him.
Tirzah Mileham (b.1971) has been a Submit to Love studio artist for the last twenty years and devotes many hours a week exploring her passion for the arts. Looking through her body of work you will find speckles of craft, splashes of colour but most recently her imagination runs wild with her monochromatic drawings filling every inch of her paper. Her piece titled ‘When Women and Fish Ruled the World’ shows hybrid women and fish in all manner of ways.
London based Jesse James Nagel (b.1993) finds creating his art exhilarating – “Not like a relaxing chess game, it feels pretty action packed to me. I don't know what is going to happen.” He starts with unplanned pencil sketches and then he feels his hand just does the work, led by his subconscious, believing it would be ‘boring’ if he knew the final outcome. Nagel adds detail and colour as he goes along with the title evolving as the work progresses. The works are built from layer upon layer of coloured pencil, to get the most vivid colour.
Cathy Ward (b.1960) was sent, as a child, to a private convent run by the Irish order of The Sisters of Mercy. This experience had a profound and lasting effect on her and her work. After graduating from the RCA, a life changing spell in Canada was spiritually and creatively transformative, before returning to London, where bereavement altered her art again. She is recognised for her intense ethereal drawings interpreted as hair, strata, and energy pulses, with art helping her to come to terms with challenges in her life.
Robert ‘Scottie’ Wilson (1891-1972) emigrated to Toronto in 1931 from Glasgow. He started to draw during the 1930’s developing a very intense style ink drawing of dream-like creatures such as swans, birds, fish, trees and flowers. In early in 1945 he returned to London, continuing this practice, although he was quickly taken up by London’s Surrealists. Wilson relied on a relatively narrow range of visual elements – botanical forms, birds and animals, clowns (self-portraits), and ‘Greedies’ and ‘Evils’ (malignant personifications).
Andrew Johnstone’s (b.1986) passion for drawing was nurtured from a very young age by his family. Drawing was also very important as it was a means by which the family communicated with Johnstone, for example by depicting people or places that they were going to visit. Johnstone works in a precise and deliberate way through drawing and ceramics. He often depicts animals and events, with a focus on things he has seen in-person or online. His work has a joyful feel, with recognisable pieces for all.
Cara Macwilliam (b.1972) is a multi-disciplinary artist who is fascinated with energy; from the physical and emotional, to the metaphysical. Her pieces capture the marks of ephemeral entities, energies and the otherworldly. The different styles produced are led by the materials used, each one has a distinctive voice and flow. The works are often layered and intricate but always pulling from intuition and unseen forces. Automatism is her preferred process, and watching things unfold before her eyes.
Cameron Morgan (b.1965) is a multi-talented and prolific artist working from the Project Ability studio in Glasgow since 1991. He works in bright 'poppy' colours across several disciplines including painting, ceramics, and embroidery. Drawing and particularly line is key in Morgan’s work. He will leave out the obvious, and accentuate parts over-looked, in doing so he is able to get to the essence of a subject. This series focuses on his love of the camera, and his creation of them in clay and embroidered straps.
Although always creative, Margate based Valerie Potter (b.1954), did not consider herself an art-maker. At 19, Potter enrolled at a UK art school, but found it restrictive and left, continuing her drawing at home. Her cross-stitch work often ties together faces, animals, plants, and love with non-religious gods. An abstract idea pops into Potter’s head (like a flower from the planet Mars), and after drawing it out in pencil, she takes her time cross-stitching it in wild bright colours. Potter is a prolific artist, still making to this day.
London based gay artist and educator Terence Wilde (b.1963) gained a degree in textiles but retrained through Croydon's voluntary mental health services. Wilde draws on his own mental health journey, from the perspective of an adult survivor, in all his black and white works. Working mainly in line drawing or ceramic, Wilde describes his works as responses to different periods in his life, showing struggles, fears, and dreams. In his ceramic work, often a word or something said, will be the focus of each work.
FILMS
Here are some short talks, mostly recorded from Zoom, where artists share a little more on their work within the exhibition, for audiences to learn directly from the artist in their own voice. In the case of Madge Gill, curator and art historian Vivienne Roberts, gives you an overview of her life, since she passed away many years ago.
