FREED FROM DESIRE
Group Show
Group Show
The Bomb Factory Art Foundation Marylebone, London
08.10.26 - 30.10.26
08.10.26 - 30.10.26
Instalation views: Marcus Nelson, High Rise (After J.G Ballard), 2026,aluminium, oil on canvas 164 x 190 cm, The Bomb Factory Marylebone.
Ballards writing has had a huge influence on me over the years. His 1975 book “ High Rise”, explores how quickly and savagely the co - habitants of a large apartment building turn on each other once the central elevator stops working. This work responds to these themes of social regresion; I often wonder how quickly society would descend into anarchy without the use of such services, and the isolation many feel in these compact urban environments.
Exhibition views:
Bringing together painting, sculpture, installation, performance and music, the exhibition explores the reclamation of space as an act of resistance. When people lose faith in their political power and their ability to make change, creative moments erupt outside organisational authority.
In the late 1980s, against a backdrop of unemployment, financial hardship and the introduction of Poll Tax, the Acid House movement transformed warehouses, disused buildings and other overlooked spaces into sites of gathering. These temporary spaces offered a counter-culture beyond the structures that governed everyday life, creating moments in which the usual boundaries of class, gender and race could be disrupted. The government responded by criminalising such gatherings. Freed From Desire returns to the movement's belief that gathering can itself be an act of defiance, as well as an expression of joy, freedom and collective possibility.
At the heart of the exhibition is the third place, a term popularised by the sociologist Ray Oldenburg to describe spaces beyond home and work that foster community and connection. Across the city, these spaces are rapidly vanishing, lost to soaring rents and cuts to civic funding. Freed From Desire considers what happens when they are gone, and how we can create them again.
The exhibition itself becomes a temporary third place, shaped by the artworks and situations encountered throughout the building. Painter and multidisciplinary artist Andrew Hart has created a chill-out room informed by his relationship with music and British club culture. His paintings respond to rhythm, atmosphere and the changing energy of a room, forming an installation designed to be experienced as much as viewed.
Elsewhere, cross-disciplinary design studio Kren transforms a reclaimed greenhouse structure into Shed, an inhabitable light installation that acts as both a beacon and a place to gather. Visitors are invited to enter and occupy the work, turning a familiar structure into a temporary space for collective use. Henry Coleman, whose work examines our history through buildings, space and signage, has salvaged and repurposed 1980s leisure centre lamps that draw on the infrastructure of our lost community spaces, recalling places once designed for collective use and prompting reflection on their loss.
Exhibiting artists:
Farnoush Amini MRSS, Pallas Citroen, Henry Coleman, Andrew Pierre Hart, Kren, Marcus Nelson, Eddie Peake, Barry Reigate, Hannah Rose Stewart, Jill Townsley, Annie Trevorah, SDNA.
︎The Bomb Factory