Kettle’s Yard Presents “Here is a Gale Warning: Art, Crisis & Survival”

Kettle’s Yard presents a powerful and thought-provoking exhibition, running from 22 March – 29 June 2025.

Artworks tackle political, social, and environmental upheavals while offering hope, solidarity, and new possibilities for survival

The exhibition gathers eight artists whose works confront global crises, from social inequity to climate collapse, encouraging viewers to reflect on solidarity, resilience, and transformative possibility through diverse artistic practices.

Kettle’s Yard in Cambridge is set to host a bold new exhibition, Here is a Gale Warning: Art, Crisis & Survival, which examines how art can serve as both an urgent alert to the world’s fragilities and a source of hope and resilience. Featuring the work of eight contemporary artists from across generations and geographies, the exhibition will run from 22 March to 29 June 2025, with a press preview on 21 March 2025, 10:45am – 1pm. Additionally, visitors will be treated to a variety of painting, sculpture, photography, installations, and moving image artworks that collectively respond to crises ranging from housing insecurity and environmental collapse to racial injustices and colonial displacement.

The exhibition takes its title from Here is a Gale Warning (1971), a work by Rose Finn-Kelcey, in which a hand-sewn flag bore an understated yet urgent message. Originally installed on scaffolding at Alexandra Palace, the piece warned of crises already in progress — and its enduring relevance serves as a touchstone for this collection of deeply resonant works. Documentation of Finn-Kelcey’s impactful piece will provide the entry point into the exhibition.

A Journey through Crisis and Creativity
Curated by Dr. Amy Tobin, Curator of Contemporary Programmes at Kettle’s Yard, this collection highlights solidarity amidst diversity. The participating artists — Pia Arke, Justin Caguiat, Rose Finn-Kelcey, Candace Hill-Montgomery, Tomashi Jackson, Tarek Lakhrissi, Anne Tallentire, and Cecilia Vicuña — form a collective response to upheavals with works that at once attest to a broken system and suggest alternative paths forward.

In the first gallery, visitors will encounter Candace Hill-Montgomery’s installation featuring works spanning fifty years of her career, including a tribute to Black Panther activist Fred Hampton and recent weavings inspired by contemporary news cycles. This presentation will mark Hill-Montgomery’s first in-depth UK showing in four decades and will sit in dialogue with the precarious yet poetic sculptures of Cecilia Vicuña, created in New York streets during the 1980s and 1990s. Vicuña’s film Cloud-Net (1999), which documents the weaving of Indigenous Andean quipu structures around the Brooklyn Bridge, will also be featured — poignantly addressing themes of colonization and erased knowledge systems.

In parallel, Pia Arke’s haunting work combines torn landscapes of her native Greenland with traces of extinct East Greenlandic songs, bringing Indigenous histories of survival and resistance into sharp focus. Nearby, Tarek Lakhrissi’s sonic installation, inspired by Monique Wittig’s lesbian epic Les Guérillères, merges metal spears and curling vines, inviting contemplation of rebellion and resilience.

Art as Community and Reminder
The second gallery continues this deep exploration of instability and recovery. Tomashi Jackson’s awning-like works highlight acts of racial solidarity in the face of societal violence, referencing events like the Los Angeles Police Department’s racialized raids and the tragic New Cross fire of 1981. Alongside them, Justin Caguiat’s lush and fantastical paintings evoke rich inner worlds and invite viewers into a space where imagination can envision alternatives to crisis. Completing this section, Anne Tallentire’s sculptures from her Interspacings series reimagine prisoners’ cells as architectural models, proposing possibilities for new structures of care and housing. Her newly commissioned drawing will also connect Kettle’s Yard’s domestic heritage to Cambridge’s social housing history.

The exhibition is supported by the Henry Moore Foundation, the Here is a Gale Warning Supporters Circle, and the Art Fund, with further research made possible through a Jonathan Ruffer Curatorial Grant. Visitors can also explore a complementary display of works by photographer Mari Mahr in the Kettle’s Yard Research Space, curated by Dr. Inga Fraser.

Why You Should Visit
Here is a Gale Warning: Art, Crisis & Survival promises to be a profound exploration of the ways art responds to crisis while offering glimpses of healing and survival. Whether through Hill-Montgomery’s tribute to activism, Vicuña’s reclamation of lost Indigenous knowledge, or Jackson’s celebration of solidarity, each work calls us to confront the challenges of today while inspiring renewed possibilities for tomorrow.