Writing Cultures presents Festival of Storytelling
Visual Stories : An Exhibition
The Platform Gallery, Knight’s Park.
February 18th to February 25th 2025.

Kingston School of Art, Knights Park. Grange Road, Kingston upon Thames, Surrey KT1 2QJ

Writing Cultures’ Festival of Storytelling takes place from January 24th to March 14th 2025, with events at The National Gallery, workshops and happenings across Kingston University, and this exhibition, a centrepiece showcase for students, staff and poets and artists across the UK. The exhibition explores visual storytelling, and how innovative methodologies around language, design, composition can amplify and extend the ways in which we read, and see, a story or tale. The exhibition presents concrete poetry alongside word clouds, abstract art alongside asemic writing, and firmly emphasises what is possible when we no longer take for granted what a story is, on the page, canvas, wall.

Featuring works by James Caley, Danica Ignacio, Eleanor Wilders, Alban and Natalie Low, Sara Upstone, David Spittle, Steven J.Fowler and many many many more to be confirmed.

The exhibition is curated by Steven J Fowler and conceived by Sara Upstone and Kate Scott. It is co-curated by Cameron Wade, Eleanor Wilders and Danica Ignacio.

Please find more information on Writing Cultures presents Festival of Storytelling events here :

• January 24th at the National Gallery www.writerskingston.com/nationalgallery25/

• January 30th at the Kingston Curzon www.writerskingston.com/story/

• February 20th at Kingston University www.writerskingston.com/exhibitionevent/

• March 14th at the National Gallery www.writerskingston.com/nationalgallery252/

Kingston School of Art. Grange Rd, Kingston upon Thames KT1 2QJ
Take a left upon entering the main doors and in the corridor, another immediate left up the staircase to the exhibition space.

A dynamic exhibition of new visual art and poetry made by staff, students, those local to the University as well as artists from around the UK. On the theme of Para-ability, this explores (but is not limited to) disability, neurodiversity, mental health and chronic illness and in all the complexity of those issues, celebrating the ambiguous, quixotic and expansive in reflecting the necessity of the theme. Celebrating too a community that inhabits Writers Kingston, the Writing Cultures group and the University in general, exhibitors are listed below!

To watch all the performances from the special view opening event, visit https://www.writerskingston.com/paraability/

• Jieyi Sun, Albert Pellicer, Sara Upstone, Cameron Wade and Stanimir Dimitrov, Simon Tyrrell and Vicki Kaye, Virna Teixeira, Bob Modem and Martin Wakefield, Katie Hall, Patrick Cosgrove, Julia Rose Lewis, Kayona Daley, Alice Gale Feeny and Nicola Field

The exhibition is curated by SJ Fowler and conceived by Kate Scott and Sara Upstone.

The Museum of Futures : Visual Literatures exhibitions 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2020

Four remarkable, ambitious and impactful exhibitions took place at the community arts space, The Museum of Futures, in Surbiton just as Writers Kingston came into being. The exhibitions not only showcased early career poets and artists alongside more experienced practitioners from across the globe, but genuinely pioneered visual poetry practise across the asemic, photographic, collagic and more. It built a community at numerous events and installations and brought people from across the UK, and beyond, to the doorstep of Kingston University. It built on the foundation of the local community too, making relationships that last and allowing many to get their start in exhibiting, performing and curating. The project was curated by SJ Fowler and Simon Tyrrell, and involved over 100 poet artists by it’s sessation. Photographs and posters below.

#4 - A Notational Literature, The (Un)finished Draft
The 4th annual Museum of Futures Exhibition
February Tuesday 18th 2020 to March Tuesday 17th 2020

The poem, the story, the poster, the literary artwork as Note. Note as in draft, as in graphic symbol, as in discovered text. Note as in reminder, forgotten, perhaps scrawled, handwritten, typed or digital. Note on a phone, in a notebook, on a bus. The notebook as the poem, the word doc draft as the final story, because the author intervened. An exhibition that celebrates the process over the product, that takes pleasure, and pain, in the inevitable unfinished, in that which points to a future finality that’ll never come.

With works by Patrick Cosgrove, Martin Wakefield, Katerina Koulouri, Cleary Mallard, Sarah Dawson, Astra Papachristodoulou, Maria Omena, Jasmine Barrett, Alex Hegazy, Djahane Zair, Stephen Emmerson, Milly Webster, Andrew Milward, Danielle Moles, Jacqueline Ennis Cole, Joe Turrent, Michael Sutton, Jon Stone, Beth Kingston-Lee, Mike Weston, Julia Rose Lewis, Alison Graham, Ryan Ormonde, Simon Tyrrell, Saradha Soobrayen, Gabriella Buckner, Nic Stringer, Oscar Mardell, Laurensia Puia, Marcia Knight Latter, Flora Esther Nicholson, SJ Fowler et al. The exhibition was curated by SJ Fowler and Gabriella Buckner, Marcia Knight Latter, Maria Omena, Jasmine Barrett, Djahane Zair and Aifric Kyne.

#3 - Phoetry / Poetography / Photographic Literature : The third annual Museum of Futures Writers’ Centre Kingston Visual Literature Exhibition : February 21st to March 5th 2019

The third annual exhibition of visual literature at Surbiton’s remarkable Museum of Futures. With nearly 30 artists exhibiting new works that take on the intersections between poetry / literature and photography as an act of exploration, of paradox, of possibility. Two mediums living through different creative realities - one purely linguistic, the other visual, one built of light, upon technology, the other originary in the human mind. This exhibition aims to bring together photographers, poets, artists, writers and everyone in between to show what these two fields might create when a cohesive combination evidences literature that isn’t just text, or discourse, or opinion, and photography that isn’t just pictorial.

Featuring works by Patrick Cosgrove, Albert Pellicer, Iris Colomb, Lisa Kiew, Astra Papachristodoulou, Bruno Neiva, Sarah Dawson, Katerina Koulouri, Julia Rose Lewis, James Caley, Freya Harwood Bond, Simona Nastac, Aleksandr Zapol, SJ Fowler, Karen Sandhu, Martin Wakefield, Emilee Moyce, Mark Chamberlain, Clover Peake, Han Smith, Paul Hawkins, Ruby Wroe, Jacqui Ennis Cole, Vilde Torset, Sara Upstone, Joe Turrent, Dominic Jaeckle, Susie Campbell, Sabine Thoele, Hoagy Houghton, Lucy Furlong, Steffi Klenz, Emily Garvey, Yvonne Litschel, Olga Kolesnikova, Natalie Whitaker.

Museum of Futures: Visual Poetry Exhibition
Scribbling and scrawling : Feb 22nd to March 21st 2018

Lisa Kiew / Simone Kay / Adam Baron / Patrick Cosgrove / Alan Boyce / Simon Tyrell / Lucy Furlong / Yvonne Litschel / Molly Bergin / Dacy Lim / Silje Ree / Julia Rose Lewis / Olga Kolesnikova / Denise McCulloch / MJ Weller / Daniele Pantano / Paul Hawkins / Daniel Lehan / Deborah Sibbald / Mark Jackson / Lucy Crump / Alison Miller / Paul Hawkins / Cleary Mallard / Linda Black / Sarah Dawson / Mendoza / Jaclyn Del Guidice / Phoebe Robertson / Hugh Hadfield / Astra Papachristodoulou / Nicole Polonsky / Matthew Kay / Susie Campbell / Katerina Koulouri / Mendoza

An exhibition that presented new visual literature on the theme of Scribbling and Scrawling - works that explored the handmade, the illegible, the dirty, the rough, the visual, the material, the calligraphic, the link - works which resist their content and express their context. Works that celebrate the notation, the forgotten, the colourful. This exhibition aimed to bring together generations, creative communities, including many students and faculty from Kingston University, alongside those local or connected to the region.

Partnering with the Museum of Futures - a dynamic community arts space that has engaged Surbiton residents, families and businesses since 2015 and curated by The Community Brain CIC, the exhibition aims to showcase early career poets and artists alongside more experienced practitioners and build on the community, beginning new relationships and collaborations, that already surround this wonderful venue. The engagement with themes of suburbia, the Seething mythos and the humour so prevalent in the Museum of Futuresenterprise will undoubtedly also influence the exhibition's aesthetic.

Museum of Futures:
Visual Poetry Exhibition I Feb 23rd to March 12th 2017 

Over forty poets and artists local or connected to the Surbiton or Kingston area present brand new works especially made for this group exhibition. Exploring the visual and material properties of language through concrete poems, abstract painting, asemic writing and many other avant-garde techniques, this exhibition aims to bring together generations, creative communities, including many students and faculty from Kingston University, as well as methodologies, through a shared engagement with the participants localism. 

Visit www.theenemiesproject.com/futures for more info.

With new works from Imogen Abed / Ed Arantus / Tim Atkins / Adam Baron / Hannah Bates / Molly Bergin / Susie Campbell / Zakia Carpenter-Hall / Ripley Chandler / Patrick Cosgrove / Sarah Dawson / Thomas Duggan / SJ Fowler / Lucy Furlong / Penny Goring / Yasmine Griffiths-Williams / Mark Harris / Megan Haycock / Ann Hulland / Imo Jeffes / Dean Kenning / Yessica Klein / Olga Kolesnikova / Julia Lewis / Dacy Lim / Cleary Mallard / Raif Mansell / Alison Miller / Matthew Navey / Camilla Nelson / Ronan O'Brien / Albert Pellicer / Zoe Radford / Shauna Darling Robertson / David Russomano / Elly Rutherford / Anna Smallman / Agnieszka Studzinska / Virna Teixeira / Simon Tyrrell / Alice Willis // Curated by SJ Fowler with assistant curators Megan Haycock, Molly Bergin, Olga Kolesnikova, Dacy Lim and Matt Navey.