Image Credits:
Left: Lina Mangiacapre dir., The Sibyls (1977, 25 min), produced by Le Tre Ghinee Cooperative / Le Nemesiache.

Right: Alison Lloyd, Romilly Crescent, 1979

Public Preview
Saturday 3rd October
2pm - 3pm

Mirrors, Windows, Portals brings together an intergenerational group of artists exploring embodied approaches to the photographic archive. The exhibition grew from conversations between Assunta Ruocco and the late Alison Lloyd, who shared an interest in re-animating photographic archives and considering how images from the past can shape how we understand ourselves in the present.

Bringing together photography, moving image, performance and installation, the exhibition features artists whose practices draw on personal and family archives, working across generations and in collaboration with friends and loved ones.

The title responds to John Szarkowski’s influential 1978 concept of photography as either a ‘mirror’ reflecting the artist or a ‘window’ onto the world. Here, these distinctions become less fixed: mirrors, windows and bodies of water act as thresholds into other realities, allowing artists to revisit, transform and reimagine the past.

Works by Ellen Angus, Sofia Yala, Janhavi Sharma, Our Days of Gold (Assunta Ruocco and Daniel T. Wheeler) Giulia Damiani and Le Nemesiache are presented alongside Alison Lloyd’s Romilly Crescent, 1979, a 35mm slide installation drawn from her photographic archive, much of which was produced while she was studying at Cardiff College of Art between 1976 and 1979.

Together, the artists demonstrate how archives can become active spaces of memory, self-recognition and imagination — creating connections between past, present and possible futures.

Image Credit: Alison Lloyd, Romilly Crescent, 1979'

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Open until 30th October 2026