For centuries, the receding waters of the River Thames have deposited London’s history onto its muddy shores. Known since the late eighteenth century as “mudlarking,” this foreshore scavenging remains a quiet passion for those seeking Roman coins, shattered ceramics, or fragments of old clay pipes. Brooklyn-based painter Kylie Manning occupies precisely this liminal threshold—where the waters settle and history gathers in strata—in her debut London solo exhibition, The Mudlarkers.
On view at Pace Gallery’s Hanover Square space from 13 October through 14 November 2026, the exhibition continues Manning’s practice of translating the spirit of the geographies she inhabits onto canvas. This time, however, the artist incorporates not only her imagination but the literal earth into her palette: Hampshire and London mud, alongside sediment dredged from the Thames riverbed, merge with raw pigments to form the fundamental medium of her paintings. Captured at the peak of high tide—that fragile moment before one state surrenders to another—the compositions are inscribed onto canvas through saturated hues and a vibrant sense of dynamic movement.
Likening the act of painting to searching for something along a riverbed, Manning defines her process as an act of faith in what remains concealed just beneath the surface. Conducted within a mental geology without any certainty of the final outcome, this excavation takes shape through the constant erasing and rewriting of visual layers across the canvas.
Informed by traces of her own biography—from time spent aboard stormy Alaskan fishing vessels to surfing memories off the coast of Mexico—Manning enriches her engagement with light and balance through an ongoing historical dialogue. Spanning the atmospheric luminosity of J.M.W. Turner, the decisive brushwork of Frans Hals, and the unconventional forms of Berthe Morisot and Ruth Asawa, this visual vocabulary filters the historically codified concept of the “masterpiece” through a contemporary feminist lens.
Preceded by an opening reception on the evening of 12 October, The Mudlarkers can be visited at Pace Gallery London.
