Painitng of man laying on sofa reading — Mike Silva, Jason Reading, 2024, Courtesy of the artist, The Approach, London and Anton Kern Gallery, New York

Mike Silva

Date

Fri 2nd May - Sun 22nd Jun 2025

Venue

Mead Gallery

Need to know

Free, just drop by!

Tuesday – Sunday, 11am – 8pm.

Recommended Age:

Suitable for all

The Mead Gallery is pleased to present a solo exhibition of London-based artist, Mike Silva.

Silva paints portraits, interiors, still lifes and landscapes drawn from an ongoing personal archive of photographic material. The exhibition brings together new and recent paintings including portraits, interiors and landscapes. These include acquaintances, friends and lovers of past and present, as well as the interior spaces that these subjects spend or spent time in. In all of his paintings, light can be seen as a protagonist, and Silva's ability to capture subtle shifts of light and shadow within moments quietly and intimately observed, moves the works beyond the photorealist genre through his gestural application of paint on canvas.

Mike Silva’s exhibition is organised by The Mead Gallery, in collaboration with the De La Warr Pavilion where it opened in Autumn 2024.

Mao Ishikawa

The Mead Gallery is delighted to present the first institutional exhibition in the UK of revered Okinawan photographer Mao Ishikawa.

Presenting more than 60 works from the 1970s to now, the exhibition includes works from her iconic Women of Okinawa series, through to more recent works, including her series Fences and My Family.

Ishikawa is renowned for her raw images of daily life in her home of Okinawa, which was controlled by the USA until the island was returned to Japanese sovereignty in 1972, though it continues to be occupied by US troops. The photographer's powerful images examine the complex colonial, racial and sexual dynamics for those who Okinawa is home to.

Find out more about Mao Ishikawa's exhibition.