Exhibitions

Wath Hall Residency with Emma Bolland and Tyler Mellins
May 2026

It must work like a recording (fixed in the floor and the walls)

It must work like a recording (fixed in the floor and the walls) is a site-specific residency in Wath-Upon-Dearne, South Yorkshire. Its name is taken from a line of dialogue in The Stone Tape, a 1972 BBC television play in which a team of researchers discover a haunted room. Instead of supernatural ghosts, they find that the stone walls, like magnetic tapes, have recorded traumatic events.

Under this premise, the residency invites three artists — Emma Bolland, Tyler Mellins, and Rachel Smith — to occupy Wath Hall, an 18th century house now home to a community of ghost-hunters, crystal healers and Reiki practitioners.

Operating from queer and neurodivergent perspectives, the artists consider how a building might function as a vessel for retaining psychic energies such as memory, emotion, and mania. They ask the house questions and the house becomes porous, answering their questions by peeling back its wallpaper and rolling up its carpets. Their resulting work exists in the space as interventions or apparitions: glitches that interrupt the experience of moving through the building and provoke a more active mode of perceiving its latent properties.

Image courtesy of James Clarkson 2026

Image courtesy of the artist 2026

Images courtesy of James Clarkson 2026

A Book Arts Revolution, Christies, London, February 2026

In February 2026 the UK Friends of NMWA presented the UK shortlist of Women to Watch: A Book Arts Revolution in an exhibition at Christie’s in London.

Curator Welmoet Wartena nominated 5 artists for the shortlist:

Tamsin Green, Larissa Nowicki, Francisca Prieto, Batool Showghi, and Rachel Smith.

The exhibition showcased their diverse practices rooted in the material, conceptual, and imaginative possibilities of the book.

“The artworks in this exhibition highlight the tactile, sculptural, and conceptual qualities of the book, with a specific interest in the materiality and narrative of a book. I believe the book, and the artists’ book, is not a static object. it embodies the process of thinking and making by the artists and relates to its [cultural] environment. The book crosses cultural divides, and generates conversations as an object, as a text/image, and as an artwork. A book changes, transforms, and carries information through time and space. It is a place to experiment, interpret, represent, explore, or perform.” Welmoet Wartena, from the curators introduction.

Following the exhibition, one artist will be chosen to represent the UK in the NMWA’s international Women to Watch exhibition in Washington DC in 2027. Women to Watch is a long-running international programme initiated by the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington DC. It champions women artists at pivotal stages in their careers by providing museum visibility on an international platform.

For more information about the artists, exhibition, and UK Friends events:

https://www.ukfriendsofnmwa.org/2027-contemporary-book-art/

https://www.christies.com/en/events/women-to-watch-uk-exhibition