Next Exhibition
Gathered Leaves
Friday 26th June - Saturday 16th August 2026
Andrew Bracey / Andrew Townsend / Barrie Tullet / Catrin Morgan / Danica Maier / Daniel Rapley / Derek Sprawson / George Miles / Graeme Oxby / Jantze Holmes / John Newling / Katharina Fitz / Paul Hart / Pauline Woolley / Theo Simpson / Tom Martin & Michelle Walsh
In partnership with Newark Book Festival, Vibrant Matter will be reimagined as an interactive exhibition of published and self-published works by visual creatives residing and/or working across Nottinghamshire and Lincolnshire. The selected books span a wide spectrum of creative practices including photography, fine art, graphic design and illustration.
Gathered leaves aims to celebrate a rich ecosystem of published creatives across our region, whilst exploring creative motivations that inform publishing practices. Alongside the books, a curated selection of artworks connected to the publications will also be on display. Many of the books and artworks will be available to purchase.
A programme of publisher and artist talks will run throughout the exhibition at Vibrant Matter. Our headline event is a talk and book signing with special guest speaker James Payne, author of the Thames & Hudson published book ‘Great Art Explained’, and Youtuber with almost 2 million subscribers, taking place at Newark’s Palace Theatre at 7pm on Thursday 9th July.
Past Exhibitions
What Persists
Friday 10th April - Saturday 6th June 2026
Victoria Ahrens / James Lumsden / Johanna Melvin / Fleur Patrick / David Penny / Daniel Rapley / Dafna Talmor / Hendrik Zeitler
This inaugural group exhibition at Vibrant Matter brings together artists whose practices are grounded in sustained engagement with the material conditions of their chosen media. Rather than treating material as a neutral vehicle, the works presented here explore it as an active presence – one that informs, resists and shapes the work as it comes into being.
Across abstraction and representation, the artists work in dialogue with their chosen media — responding to the inherent characteristics of photographic materials, the viscosity of paint, the texture of surfaces. Decisions emerge slowly, shaped as much by material behaviour as by intention. In this sense, making becomes a reflective investigation, where outcomes are often discovered rather than forced.