Under London’s gray February sky settling over Maddox Street, on the London Tower floor of Apartment No:26, we encounter the most elemental and chaotic state of earth this time. In contrast to the city’s metallic and glass surfaces, the moment you step through the door of Huxley-Parlour gallery, what greets you is a modern rebellion of humanity’s oldest material. The exhibition Metamorphosis: On Clay removes clay from being merely a craft object and transforms it into a platform where stories are inscribed, ideologies are debated, and collective memory is reconstructed.
The atmosphere on this floor is filled not so much with the characteristic scent of freshly fired ceramic, but with the tense yet inviting energy of past and future colliding. By bringing together artists from different generations and geographies, the exhibition lays bare how mud becomes a tool of resistance and transformation. If your path takes you through London’s rainy and melancholic streets these days, be sure to make time for this journey beneath the surface of the earth. Because what is displayed here is not merely sculptures; each one is a living, breathing narrative echoing through the corridors of the Apartment.
Traces of Time and Layers of Memory
At the heart of the exhibition are artists who unite different layers of time on a single surface. SaraNoa Mark and Isis Dove-Edwin work like archaeologists, carving every notch into the clay. While Mark’s incised surfaces record the evolution of landscape and the accumulation of history, Dove-Edwin merges traditional Nigerian ceramic techniques with a modern choreography.
Here, mud ceases to be a static material and becomes a fluid memory card. As you walk through the exhibition, you almost hear the sound of the old stones beneath the foundations of Apartment No:26. These forms seeping from the dusty shelves of the past into the present force the viewer to ask again with every step: “Who are we, and where do we belong?”
Power, Consumption, and Grotesque Forms
Metamorphosis: On Clay does not merely offer an aesthetic viewing; it also holds up a harsh mirror to the distortions of today’s world. Lindsey Lou Howard and Jessica Stoller play with the nature of the material to pull us out of our comfort zones. While Howard satirizes food culture and consumer frenzy through a grotesque horror aesthetic, Stoller shatters the “noble” and “clean” image of porcelain with grotesque forms.
Meanwhile, Shahpour Pouyan’s sculptures representing architectural mechanisms of power symbolize how authority is constructed and how it can be dismantled. Power, desire, and consumption are redefined through the shapes the earth takes between the artist’s fingers. These works stand like monuments reminding us of the fragility hidden behind the glass towers of the modern city.
Nature’s Resistance and Spatial Dialogue
London-based artists Dean Hollowood, Aneta Regel, and Katie Spragg examine the relationship between object and space, as well as nature’s resistance to the order imposed by human hands. Regel’s amorphous structures that intertwine stone and ceramic especially emphasize the unfinished, perpetually becoming nature of the material.
The exhibition invites the viewer not merely to observe, but to become part of this transformation. Using clay as a narrative tool, each artist tells stories across a wide spectrum—from migration to ecology, from personal diaries to collective monuments. For the residents of Apartment No:26, this exhibition is an unparalleled stop for making sense of the whispers between the walls.
Exhibition Details
Exhibition Title: Metamorphosis: On Clay
Dates: March 6 – April 18, 2026
Venue: Huxley-Parlour, 45 Maddox Street, London, W1S 2PE
Visiting Hours: Monday – Friday: 11:00 – 17:30, Saturday: 10:00 – 13:00
If you wish to feel the spirit of this exhibition more closely, you can also browse other current art news on our London floor or join the day’s music discovery downstairs at Pikap.
