Exhibition Opening: She Sells Sea Shells

Inspired by the waterside home of pioneering American photographer Alice Austen and her lifelong partner Gertrude Tate, the exhibition brings together 12 contemporary artists to explore the relationship between queer women and the seashore. New, existing, and site-specific works by the artists will be exhibited alongside Austen’s photographs and objects from her extensive shell collection, with pieces displayed throughout the gallery spaces and the historic domestic rooms of the home.

Exhibiting artists include: Alice Austen (1866–1952, New York, US), Ana Benaroya (b.1986, New York, US), Lola Flash (b.1959, Montclair, US), Jenna Gribbon (b.1978, Knoxville, US), Meryl Meisler (b.1951, New York, US), Alina Perez (b.1995, Miami, US), Marguerite Piard (b.1996, Rueil-Malmaison, France), Hannah Quinlan & Rosie Hastings (b.1991, Newcastle / London, UK), Nastja Säde Rönkkö (b.1985, Helsinki, Finland), Ro Robertson (b.1984, Sunderland, UK), SHARP (b.1971, Bradford, UK), Alexandria Smith (New York, US)

Across art, literature, and film, queer women have long been depicted at the water’s edge—intimately connected to coastlines, tides, and the liminal space of the sea. From the stormy romance of Céline Sciamma’s Portrait of a Lady on Fire to the writing of Julia Armfield, Anne Carson, and Eileen Myles, these narratives evoke longing, isolation, and transformation. While promoting her 2022 novel Our Wives Under the Sea, Armfield wryly captured this trope when she asked, “What is it with these lesbians and why are they all so wet?” She Sells Seashells builds on this lineage, presenting work by contemporary artists that reflects on the seashore as a site of queer desire, connection, grief, and possibility.

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