Year-long programme of events launched to celebrate 10 years of Now Gallery
In 2024 NOW Gallery will celebrate its 10 year anniversary, a significant milestone marked by some truly memorable exhibitions.
Tucked behind North Greenwich station, NOW Gallery champions early-career talent across fashion, design, art and photography.
Housed in a curved glass fish bowl, artists are given free reign to interpret the space as they like. Past transformations include a jazz club – Joy Yamusangie’s ‘Feeling Good’ – an extraterrestrial planet – Lydia Chan’s ‘Your Ship Has Landed’ – and a giant knitted jumper – Matty Bovan’s ‘Ribbons’.
Always free to the public, it is one of the few non-profit London galleries that remains to support emerging artists and is run by an all-female team.
In 2024, NOW Gallery is set to continue its leading role in the London Arts scene with a year-long programme of exhibitions covering installations, photography, illustration and design.
First up, from March 29 until June 2, the gallery will be showcasing Like A Melody: Myths, Memories and Fantasy, by artist and illustrator Charlotte Mei.
Fee to attend, Like A Melody will see Ms Mei transform NOW Gallery into her own realm through paintings, giant figurines and sculptures of ancient artifacts from a parallel universe.
She said: “From my childhood, and until this day, fantasy stories, films and video games have woven purpose and poetry into the way I view the world. Like a Melody is a tribute to the preciousness of fantasy and myth.”
A design commission, Up in Smoke, by John Booth and Mat Barnes will run off the back of Like A Melody, opening on June 21 to run throughout the summer until September 22.
Up in Smoke is a hyper local historic piece which will chart the history of the Greenwich Peninsula’s chimney, with five interactive installations.
Taking up the Gallery’s annual photographic display, Human Stories, is Ines Elsa Dalal.
Ms Dalal’s exhibition, Unreported Uprisings, documents striking workers across all sectors of society from the front lines during the pandemic, to breadlines due to the Cost of Living Crisis, to picket lines of protestors who have traveled across the UK to advocate for their right to fair pay in central London.
Unreported Uprisings will be shown at the gallery between October 11 and November 17.
And finally, the Gallery’s fashion commission of 2024 will see the results of an ambitious school wide project to mend thousands of socks and get a whole community mending.
Between December 6, and February 2025, Celia Pym will showcase her exhibition, Sock Mending, after working with children from Surrey Square Primary School.
Ms Pym said: “The exhibition will highlight our relationship with clothes and sustainability while advocating for a more considerate approach to fashion and the way we wear our clothes.”
To celebrate 10 years with Now Gallery head down to Greenwich Peninsula for their new programme of exhibitions this year.
Pictured top: Emmanuelle Moreaux’s Slices of Time at the Now Gallery in 2020 (Picture: Charles Emerson)