KEYSTONE SPECIES | 27 March 2026 - 27 June 2026
About the Exhibition
We are delighted to present a new exhibition drawn from our Bethnal Green studios, offering a glimpse into the diverse practices and conversations shaping our in-house artistic community.
KEYSTONE SPECIES brings together thirteen artists based in Proposition’s studios whose work engages with the idea of keystone species: organisms whose presence has a disproportionate influence on shaping their ecological region by supporting a much greater abundance of life than would be possible without them. When these species disappear, entire systems can collapse; when they are present the world around them flourishes. The exhibition takes this ecological principle as a point of departure for reflecting on interdependence, responsibility, and potential for positive impact.
Across performance, painting, film, sculpture, writing, sound, and installation, the artists Owen Bennett, Jennifer Crouch, Alex Hincapié, Lisa Gornick, Jolene Liam, Zoë Marden, Fergus Polglase, Katherine Pogson, Olha Pryymak, Nina Ross, Nwakuba Udenze, Siena Venturino-Malcherczyk and tyroneissacstuart explore the idea of keystone species in a multitude of tones. Some focus on particular organisms and environments, drawing on observation, research, and ecological knowledge. Others work metaphorically, exploring resonances between ecological systems and human structures, relationships, and practices of care. Together, the works move between the scientific and the speculative, the literal and the abstract, inviting reflection on both specificity and broader patterns of influence.
The artists also draw awareness to the transformation of materials, treating them as active participants in the processes they represent. By experimenting with materials and ecological processes, the works show how conscious human engagement with living systems enables flourishing while influencing perception, interaction, and imaginative potential.
Exhibition Details
Private View: Thursday 26th March, 6.30pm – 8.30pm (RSVP: Private View RSVP Ticket Link)
Exhibition Dates: Friday 27th March – Saturday 27 June 2026
Opening Hours: Wednesday – Saturday, 12pm – 7pm
Location: Proposition Bethnal Green, 279 Cambridge Heath Road, London, E2 0EL
Artist Biographies
Owen Bennett is a London and Manchester-based photographic artist who graduated from the London College of Communication in 2021. Alongside his practice, he currently works as a support worker in London. His work explores interpersonal connections with a specific focus on anti-humanist and anti-normal relationships, challenging conventional social structures through a lens of quiet observation.
Bennett’s work is profoundly shaped by his background as a familial and professional carer. Growing up in an environment of necessary care incited a deep curiosity into the intricacies of human interdependency and interpersonal bonds. By positioning care as a foundational necessity rather than a passive gesture, he investigates the socio-political importance of these relationships and their role in shaping generational consciousness.
While multidisciplinary in outlook, Bennett’s practice is rooted in a collaborative photographic ethics, moving away from solitary observation toward shared creation. This approach frames artistic production as a form of emotional labor, allowing him to navigate visual languages of sexuality, gender, and power. Ultimately, his work seeks to document the totality of his subjects, cultivating environments that sustain connection and offer room for collective resilience.
Dr. Jennifer Crouch is an art-science practitioner and researcher working in sculpture, textiles, installation and image-making. Their art practice is informed by their background in physics, medical illustration and textile Their process includes transdisciplinary study and world building to draw out the multi-scalar nature of embodied knowledge. Jennifer cofounded the Cosmic New Materialisms reading group, teaches textiles at Morley College and has participated in residencies, conferences and exhibitions internationally presenting art-research on topics such as medical humanities, critical space (post)humanities and plant mutations. Their PhD explored the material, computational and experiential aspects of MRI through sculpture and textiles. Their doctoral project materialised through their medicalised subjectivity as a cancer patient, and analysed the hidden labour in computation, textiles and medicine. By drawing on the shared lineage of the loom and the computer they developed a post-digital computational approach to materialising processes we cannot see as patients and ‘recorporealised’ data extracted from the body.
Alex Hincapié aka @hincapiendo (she/they) is a performer and community organiser based in London.
“As part of my practice, I use textile, soil, clay and wax to create site-specific installations, usually set in queer underground environments. I employ crafts making and participatory games to bring people together, celebrate queer identities and personal stories. I am passionate about arts and crafts as a tool to foster ideas and solidarity. “
Past works and workshops were held at Turf Projects, QUEERCIRCLE, Gasworks, the Arcola Theatre, Southbank Centre, SET studios, Hedonifest (Bureau of Silly Ideas), Colour Factory, Rich Mix, Riposte, Haringey Fringe Festival, Pitzhanger Manor & gallery and Applecarts. They also attended and supported FiBRA residency in Oaxaca, Mexico (2019).
Lisa Gornick is a filmmaker, performer and artist whose practice centers on live drawing shows—hybrid performances that function as real-time cinema with spontaneous exhibitions.
Working with pen, pastel and paint in front of live audiences, Gornick draws while narrating personal and political histories, creating stand-up diy cinema. Afterwards the drawings become a spontaneous exhibition.
Often Gornick incorporates drawing workshops both within her live shows and as a generative process for developing new work for example, climate change workshops for the Royal College of Nursing and revolution-themed workshops at Queen Mary's University.
Gornick's work explores identity, intergenerational trauma and comedy. Her award winning feature films Do I Love You? (2003) and Tick Tock Lullaby (2007) established her cinematic voice. The Book of Gabrielle (2016-2019), a cross-platform project interweaving feature film, live performance, web series, and exhibition, premiered at the Barbican Cinema and toured internationally.
Recent live drawing work includes How To Do It (2020-2025), an Arts Council-funded exploration of intimacy and self-help, comprising a show, exhibition and book; Drawing on the Bottle (2024), examines addiction and capitalism, and What The Fuck is Lesbian Film (2020-26) about filmmaking and patriarchy.
Her live drawing performances have been celebrated for their wit and immersion. In March 2026 she will present a retrospective of five live drawing shows at The Omnibus Theatre, https://www.omnibus-clapham.org/lisa-gornick/. The Day in the life of a Beaver premiering at Proposition in March, will be her first show about the ecosystem and natural history.
Jolene Liam is an artist and architect from Singapore. She believes that the spaces we inhabit and the objects we collect reveal a lot about us; expressions of our identities, habits, and personalities. Liam’s background as an architect has fuelled an interest in observing and documenting how places are occupied and experienced. In the process, she hopes to encounter different ways of thinking about the spaces around us, from everyday and in-between spaces to imagined landscapes.
Working in the expanded, experimental field of drawing enables Liam to find new ways of interrogating space. The ‘in-between’ and the ‘not quite’ are her tools of choice, creating works that sit on the boundaries between drawing, painting and sculpture. Breaking away from the confines of orthographic drawing lets her explore the gaps between conventional methods of representation, mapping things that cannot be measured.
Liam studied on the Off-Site Programme at Turps Art School. Her work has been selected and shortlisted for several awards including the Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize, Art Gemini Prize, Derwent Art Prize, World Illustration Awards, and Royal Institute of British Architects’ Eye Line Drawing Competition. She lives and works in London.
Zoë Marden is an artist, musician, filmmaker and organiser living between her home town of Hong Kong and London. Her practice moves through voice, ritual, and embodiment. Rooted in queer ecologies and post-human feminisms, she creates speculative spaces where intimate performances play with the voice, activating soundscapes of desire and vulnerability. Her practice is increasingly led by sonic intuition using looping pedals and the voice as a site of transformation under the moniker of Zero. Her work blends performance, moving image, and installation into immersive environments that slip between myth and memory. Her practice extends to the creation spaces of performance with the focus on collective care, resistance, and queer kinship.
She graduated from the Royal College of Art’s Moving Image MA in 2018. She is one half of SMZW a performance collaboration between her and Hong Kong based artist and activist Sonia Wong, their work comes from a legacy of feminist and queer theories, community work and activism, rooted in the context of Hong Kong.
Marden’s recent solo exhibitions include NOCTURN [2] feat. ZOË MARDEN, Little Portland Street, London (2024), HADAL ZONE, Roman Road, London (2023) Becoming Creature, Kong Art Space, Hong Kong (2023); and Marine Lovers...their fishy beginnings, V.O. Curations, London (2021).
Selected recent group exhibitions and performances include: After Human:Marks of the Beasts, Tomorrow Maybe, Hong Kong (2024) Tabula rasa: Unveiled, No. 9 Cork Street London (2023), Faces of Gaia, 10 Chancery Lane Gallery, Hong Kong (2023); Living A Performance Artist's Life, MadeIn Museum, Shanghai (2023); Under Blue Shade, Roman Road, London (2023), Becoming The Wild Thing, Tai Kwun Contemporary, Hong Kong (2022); Becoming Creature, Tabula Rasa Gallery, London (2022); Born to make you happy, The Residence Gallery, London (2022); Queer to the Bank, Galleria Fonti, Naples (2022); SomoS, Berlin (2020); Remember the Liquid Ground, Gasworks, London (2020), Grounded, Coastal Currents Arts Festival, 2020; Gaze to the UNKNOWN, Mimosa House, London, 2019; AMY/YMA, Serpentine Gallery, London, (2019)
Residencies: Unsound Lab, Poland (2025), K11 Art Foundation & Art Review Artist-in-Residence, Wuhan, China (2024), FAAP, Sao Paulo, Brazil (2024), The Palace Collective, Poland (2023)
Fergus Polglase is a British painter born in Cambridge, England in 1997. He currently lives and works in his studio in Bethnal Green, London. Polglase completed his foundation at Falmouth University and continued his studies at Central Saint Martins on the BA Fine Art painting course.
Childhood memories, subconscious reveries and woodland stories are central to his uncanny creations, constantly reappearing in his visual work in the form of chromatic compositions and androgynous figures. Both fairytales and nightmares make up his paintings, which are created in a performative act that expands beyond the canvas and onto surrounding surfaces.
Polglase’s practice exists between abstraction and figuration. It is primarily intuitive. He began without knowing exactly where he was going. Shapes and colours gradually build up through layering, until an image reveals itself. Polglase works with old images found in antique shops, from newspaper clippings, record covers, film stills and from drawings made from life which he reinterprets and transforms. These figures or objects may be painted on then painted back over, leaving the viewer wondering what happened before. Each viewer may have their own interpretation of what has happened, bringing their own lives through the work.
These images become fragments of memory, blending personal recollection with collective history, making ethereal landscapes.
Polglase’s paintings are built through layers, leaving visible traces of time and gesture. Certain things or motifs may reoccur in his work, relating to his past, such as horses which tell of his father’s time working as a horse trainer and being brought up on a farm in Nottinghamshire.
Drawing serves as the foundational pulse of Polglase’s work, dictating the initial gestures that eventually evolve into paint.
Polglase often introduces physical constraints especially when working on a large scale forcing a dialogue between his intent and the medium. Working with a wide range of materials and welcoming accidents, Polglase’s entire production is traversed by a strong sense of unrestrained freedom, in addition to the desire for an organic symbiosis with the natural process of painting.
Katherine Pogson is a multispecies art researcher with an expanded practice that includes textile sculpture, creative writing, moving image and collaboration with performers. Her work interrogates human relationships with constructs of ‘nature’ by exploring the power dynamics involved in interspecies encounters. Her narratives foreground ethical dilemmas that challenge the idea of humans as central to the workings of nature, while highlighting responsibility for environmental damage and repair. By drawing attention to the overlooked, disregarded and trivialised aspects of more-than-human nature, Katherine seeks to address the alienation from biodiversity produced by urban living. The aim? To promote a multispecies sensibility.
Olha Pryymak is a Ukrainian-born artist based in London, graduated in 2023 from Royal College of Art with an MA in Painting. In the last year Olha’s painting drew heavily on her ancestral history of folkloric use of plants in dealing with personal, environmental and political changes. By painting and drawing these plants from life - she breathes new life into old stories, reimagining her cultural inheritance and identity.
Her most recent shows include: ‘The Omnipotence of Dream’ Salford Museum and Art Gallery 2024, ‘Field Works’ Trellis UCL 2024, ‘Bread’ OHSH Projects 2024, ‘Making Kin’ Studio West Gallery, 2024, ‘Positions, part one’ Alma Pearl Gallery 2023, Friends and Family, Hong Kong Art Basel OVR, Pi Artworks 2022, Stand with Ukraine, fundraising show, Hales Gallery, London 2022.
Nina Ross is a New Zealand–born artist of Ngāti Tūwharetoa descent whose practice centres on drawing as a way of exploring relationships between body and memory. Raised between Aotearoa and London, her work often reflects on return, belonging, and the ways identity is shaped through connection to landscape and lived experience.
Working across drawing, text, and sculptural forms, Her practice is informed by whakapapa, a Māori understanding of genealogy that connects people, land, and history, positioning the body within wider ecological and cultural networks.
Recent work has expanded into object-making and wearable forms, exploring how intimacy and memory might move beyond the page and exist in proximity to the body. Influenced by queer histories and punk sensibilities, Nina’s work often considers how sensuality, intimacy, and abstraction can challenge normative ways of seeing and inhabiting the body.
Nina has exhibited, lived and worked in Aotearoa New Zealand and is currently doing the same in London.
Nwakuba Udenze is a designer, animator, photographer, creative director and tutor originally from Nigeria based in London. His practice is a multifaceted creative undertaking, spanning both digital and analog practices. Udenze focuses on representing the nuances of the diaspora, contemporary culture and traditional heritage through visual and collaborative means.
tyroneisaacstuart is a London-based interdisciplinary artist who’s work is a hybrid concoction of mediums, including but not limited to song, dance, text & installation. Some works are highly solitary, and some are deeply collaborative. Regardless, all are informed by multi-layered processes & facilitate a dialogue around diasporic experience, industry, intergenerational brokenness, and movement systems.
A graduate in Jazz Saxophone from Middlesex University and the University of New Orleans, Tyrone began his career with Tomorrow’s Warriors and Boy Blue Entertainment. He has collaborated with artists such as nora chipaumire, Serafine 1369, julianknxx,and Moses Boyd, and received the Steve Reid Innovation Award and Peter Whittingham Jazz Award.
tyrone was an artist in residence at Studio Wayne McGregor in 2024/25, and now building a studio based practice studio artist at Proposition Studios. He’s building his ongoing long-form multidisciplinary body of work: S!CKJAMGOLDMORENO!SE.
Siena Venturino-Malcherczyk is a London-born multidisciplinary artist working primarily in sculpture and installation. A graduate of Camberwell College of Arts, University of the Arts London, she creates immersive spatial environments that explore the interior and exterior landscapes of human experience. Her practice is deeply informed by the migration histories of her Italian, Irish, and Polish heritage, shaping an ongoing investigation into identity, displacement, and belonging.
Through constructed, in-between spaces composed of soft sculpture, architectural interventions, and tactile materials, Venturino-Malcherczyk invites audiences to physically and psychologically navigate layered narratives. Her installations function as sites of encounter and spaces where personal memory and collective history converge. Drawing on familial stories, oral histories, and inherited cultural fragments, she examines how identity is shaped across generations and how feelings of estrangement or rootedness are embedded within both the body, mind, and the built environment.
Her work considers how private histories intersect with broader social and political landscapes, particularly in relation to migration and assimilation. By foregrounding materiality and spatial experience, she creates sculptures that are at once intimate and expansive, encouraging reflection on the emotional terrains we inhabit.
In 2024, she was selected as a Fellow for the British Council’s Venice Biennale Fellowship, further developing her research into matrilineal heritage and intergenerational narratives within the context of the Biennale’s theme, Stranieri Ovunque – Strangers Everywhere.