The body is the first space we each inhabit, the structure that carries us through life. It is resilient and fragile, miraculous and unpredictable. This exhibition brings together artists whose work considers what it means to live in and with a body, how it forms, changes, endures, and sometimes resists our expectations. 

Taking its framework from the nine months that it takes for a human body to be made, the exhibition will unfold across the same period of time. Across nine months, artists will reflect on the body as both miracle and mystery, capable of carrying us through the most ordinary of days, and capable too of shifting and surprising us. Rather than remaining static, it will shift, evolve, and transform during its run. By the end of the nine months, the exhibition will have become something wholly different from what it was at the start, echoing the processes of growth, renewal, and adaptation that mark every life. 

Alongside ideas of creation and change, the exhibition also addresses the complexity of bodies that do not behave in the ways we might imagine or desire. Illness, injury, and change can sometimes be framed as failure, as things having gone ‘wrong.’ Yet bodies are not right or wrong. They do what they can, constantly striving to sustain us. This exhibition celebrates the persistence, resourcefulness, and honesty of bodies in all their forms. 

The Artists’ General Benevolent Institution exists to support professional visual artists unable to work due to illness or injury. This exhibition aligns with that mission and acknowledges the vulnerability that comes with depending on the body for livelihood, while also recognising the creativity and strength that arise from navigating the body’s uncertainties. 

“Bodies” invites visitors to consider the body not as a fixed entity but as an ever-changing companion capable of surprising us, challenging us, and teaching us what it means to endure.