An exhibition curated by Shakthi Shrima
25 September – 1 November 2025
1 Poultry, City of London
Monday-Saturday, 11-6 PM
Opening Reception: 24 September, 6–8:30pm
Events
October 17 Frieze Week Midissage 6-8pm / Performance by John John Robinson 5-7pm
October 18 Panel Talk: Slight of Hand, Magic and Machinations in the art world
Kindly supported by Hypha Studios and BID
Borrowed from the second act of a magic trick, The Turn names the moment when something vanishes—before any reappearance or closure. Staged within this condition of interruption, the exhibition brings together a group of artists whose work lingers in states of suspension, withdrawal, and latency. Disappearance becomes an engine of meaning here, a site of fractured coherence where gestures stutter and accumulate rather than resolve.
The exhibition responds to an insatiable cultural demand for resolution, for every image to explain, every reference to arrive. The Turn aims to refuse that trajectory. Instead, a simple question is asked: what remains when nothing returns?
Spanning painting, performance, video, sound, sculpture, and installation, The Turn takes a deeper look into artistic practices concerned with the act of vanishing both as formal strategy and existential engine. The exhibition is staged within the interior of 1 Poultry, one of London’s most distinctive postmodern architectural landmarks, whose past lives as a gym, clothing shop, and theatrical façade echo the ethos of the project.
The exhibition brings together internationally significant voices in contemporary art: ritual-inflected painting, votive taxidermy, body-based performance, generative poetics, and carnivalesque mythmaking. From early photographic experimentations to resurrected experimental film, these works share a commitment to suspension, gesture, and the deferral of closure.
Participating artists include: Janine Antoni, Anne Brigman, Rameshwar Broota, Monster Chetwynd, Leonardo Devito, Cordula Ditz, aurèce vettier, Leif Holmstrand, Henry Krokatsis, Marcel Mariën, Polly Morgan, John Robinson, Benjamin Spiers, Juan Sorrentino, Unskilled Worker, Cajsa von Zeipel, Christian Rex van Minnen, and Laura Xinyue Zhou.
The Turn is made possible with the generous support of Hypha Studios, whose commitment to reimagining urban space enables the exhibition’s inhabitation of this architectural palimpsest at the heart of the City.