Focal Point Gallery reopens July 8th

We have great news to bring you from Southend-on-Sea’s Focal Point Gallery (FPG).

The gallery will be one of the first cultural venues in the country to reopen to the public on the 8th of July with social distancing and enhanced cleaning measures in operation.

The gallery reopens with Hannah Quinlan and Rosie Hastings’ first institutional exhibition ‘In My Room’, which develops the artists’ enquiry into the politics, histories and aesthetics of queer spaces and culture. The exhibition features a new film work, works on paper and a major new fresco painting and will continue until 30 August 2020.

Visit our resources section to download the In My Room Art Activity Pack.

Focal Point Gallery are also pleased to announce the future programme, which reflects their commitment to the production and presentation of pioneering new and recent contemporary art that challenges us to think and feel differently about locality, our sense of self and the importance of communities.

‘To Dream Effectively’ is a major group exhibition bringing together international artists whose work offers inventive, and at times cautionary reflections on a future that is conditional on how we dream it to be; taking inspiration from the writings of Ursula K. Le Guin.

Artists Larry Achiampong, Sophia Al-Maria, A.S.T. (Alliance of the Southern Triangle), Diann Bauer, Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley, Caspar Heinemann, Leyla Pillai, Tabita Rezaire, Himali Singh Soin, Emilija Škarnultye and Rosie Grace Ward will contribute newly commissioned and existing film, wall drawings, video games, sculpture and performance that prioritise non-binary and global narratives which offer a powerful alternative to the mainstream histories and viewpoints that dominate our past and present realities.

Works will be shown across Focal Point Gallery, Big Screen Southend and Southend High Street, including a major new temporary public art commission from Ward across the High Street Railway Bridge on view from July 2020. The exhibition will open in full from September 2020.

Entrance to exhibitions at FPG is free of charge. Opening times are Wednesday to Saturday, 10am to 5pm and Sunday 11am to 4pm.

Visitors don’t need to book but numbers permitted to the gallery will be limited so there might be a short wait in an assigned waiting area that allows for social distancing. There will be hand sanitisers at the entrance.