South London artist and educator Kate Wilson dives into the amazing world that is urban landscape and complements this Penny lecture with her solo exhibition in the Morley Gallery “Total Rubbish”. Kate will speak about how she finds inspiration in the city – from looking at and interacting with urban spaces and objects, natural and man-made. She will explore how we can all be creatively inspired by the urban landscapes around us.

Book your free ticket here

It’s a Lot Like Life is an exhibition of paintings, etchings, projections and installations by 2023-24 Zsuzsi Roboz scholars Alice Mendelowitz and Marco Piccari.

Piccari employs archival photography of gay cruising in pre – Aids New York. Mendelowitz works from a hybrid of her own personal archive and ready-made imagery. Themes of desire, urgency and fetishization run through the show, together with questions around nostalgia and the politics of space.

Join for an In Conversation, hosted by Melissa Baksh, where the artists will delve into the themes and dialogues explored in the exhibition.

Reserve your spot here

This event is in part of Art History Festival 2024, in partnership with Association for Art History. For more information: https://forarthistory.org.uk/art-history-festival-2024-london-and-national/

Celebrating the life of composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor with a concert of his work, performed by the Morley Chamber Orchestra. For more details and to book, click here

An exciting, intertextual live performance. Access to Higher Education Digital Making students present their experimental filmmaking in response to Debussy’s Book 1 Nocturnes, performed alongside live piano by Advanced Piano students.  

Location: Emma Conns Hall, Waterloo Centre, Morley College

Starts at 6pm.

Click here to learn more

Artists

Dan Howard-Birt - Rosalind Davis - Mark Dean - Justin Hibbs - Fabian Peake Barbara Nicholls - Anne Ryan - Susan Sluglett - Erika Winstone

You are invited to visit the gallery to experience the dialogues, exchanges and spin-offs that occur when these nine artists’ works are gathered together.

Morley Gallery

61 Westminster Bridge Road

London SE1 7HT

Join us at Morley Gallery to take part in our drop-in family workshops and create your own artwork to take home. Each session will focus on the exhibition and artworks on display and will be led by artist Nick Kidd.

Please be advised children should be accompanied by an adult at all times. Activities are suitable for children aged 4 to 12 years.

The workshop is free.
No need to book, but places are limited. First come first served.

Join us at Morley Gallery to take part in our drop-in family workshops and create your own artwork to take home. Each session will focus on the exhibition and artworks on display and will be led by artist Nick Kidd.

Please be advised children should be accompanied by an adult at all times. Activities are suitable for children aged 4 to 12 years.

The workshop is free.
No need to book, but places are limited. First come first served.

This event accompanies our October exhibition, When Brixton Went on Fire, a photographic exhibition illustrating the Brixton Uprisings of 1981.

Reggae music and Soundsystem culture, originating in the Caribbean, arrived in the UK in the late 1940s via the Windrush generation. Enjoyed amongst the Caribbean communities in the UK, many of whom resided in Brixton, dance parties allowed Black Britons to carve out a safe space for expression, unity and joy. Yet despite its sweet melodies, Reggae music, with its bass-heavy reverberations, has always been a form of protest, and a voice for the oppressed. Since its arrival in the UK, it has been a powerful symbol of resistance against rampant discrimination and racism – both everyday and institutionalised.  

The 1970s saw Reggae music in Britain grow deeper and more politicised. During this time, London police revived the 1824 Vagrancy Act (known as the “sus” laws)– meaning that anyone could be arrested if they simply ‘looked’ suspicious. This led to police targeting black and minority communities. This militant mood is directly reflected in the music of the time, and the 1970s saw what Paul Gilroy calls “the golden age of militant reggae,” which climaxed in 1976, when riots erupted at Notting Hill Carnival.

 Moving forward, two major events occurred in 1981: the New Cross Fire, in which 13 young Black Britons were killed in a house fire in South-East London, and the Brixton Uprisings, where predominantly young black men fought the police on the streets of Brixton. The Uprisings were a defining moment for race relations in the UK, and are detailed in Linton Kwesi Johnson’s celebrated poem “Di Great Insohreckshan”: When we run riot all over Brixton/ When we MASH up plenty police van (…) Fi make deh rule of dem understand/ Dat we NAH take no more of dem oppression.” The Uprisings, together with Reggae music, brought the animosity of the police against Britain’s Black communities to the forefront.

 This panel discussion, which will include music, will explore how Reggae music soundtracked an era of upheaval and social injustice, and how, since its arrival, it has changed British musical history forever.

Panellists include: Edward George (Black Audio Film Collective and ‘The Strangeness of Dub’, Morley Radio); June Reid (Nzinga Soundz Soundsystem); Lynda Rosenior-Patten (Nzinga Soundz Soundsystem); Professor William ‘Lez’ Henry (University of West London); Markie aka Jah Lingwa (Universal Roots Records, Brixton.)

 This event is curated and hosted by Melissa Baksh, Gallery and Exhibitions Officer at Morley College.

To attend, click here for tickets

Art and exhibtions Tour at Morley Waterloo with Dr. Jack Davy

An author event with Louise Hare, author of This Lovely City, in support of the Morley Prize for Unpublished Writers of Colour.

Louise Hare, author of This Lovely City, presents an online author event in support of the Morley Prize for Unpublished Writers of Colour. A judge on the prize, Hare will give a reading from the novel and a Q&A about her writing, her research and engagement with the Windrush story, and the Morley Prize itself.

This Lovely City is a soaring debut set in London in the aftermath of the Second World War, which charts the course of a jazz musician newly arrived in London on the Empire Windrush, and the opportunity, excitement, prejudice and love he finds in the dizzying metropolis.

read more

JOIN THE CONVERSATION!

Register for free on EVENTBRITE: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/louise-hare-author-event-tickets-161624125109?keep_tld=1

POSTPONED UNTIL THE AUTUMN

POSTPONED UNTIL THE AUTUMN

In this Morley Gallery exhibition event, featured artist Ian Rawlinson shows one of his recent films, and talks about his work and the connections that drew him back to his hometown.

His work explores aspects of change, identity and transformation, and his recent projects draw upon ideas of place and memory and he has produced a series of exhibitions and short films inspired by transitional areas of Cambridge. His new solo exhibition, a collaboration with writer and poet Grahame Davies, takes place in September 2021.

The talk accompanies What We Do : an exhibition of work by printmaking and bookbinding staff at Morley College.

To register for the event, click here