cold call…

Hypha Gallery 3 / No. 1 Poultry, London EC2R 8EN

PV: Thursday, 23th April 2025, 6-9pm

Open: 24 April 2025 – 30 May 2026, Friday – Monday, 12 – 6pm

cold call … presents works by William Aghoghogbe, Iseult Bailie, Lauren Conway, Rachel Irons, Gabriel Kidd, Evie Savini, Philip Speakman and Kelly Wu that sample, emulate, and repurpose archival material and found objects in a group exhibition curated by Cameron McClellan as part of Hypha Studios residency at 1 Poultry Street, Bank, EC2R 8EJ in Central London.

Collecting and curating objects, images and texts from both public and personal sources as part of their practice, the artists in cold call … critically reflect on the different messages we may interpret from reading these artefacts and intuiting their origins. Visitors may pick up on references woven into the works by the artists to cult horror films, urban legends, fables and fairy tales, fictions and theories that arguably shape our remembrance of the past as much as the historical facts. These sensationalist readings are contrasted with the use of humble materials, paper, pen and pencil, spoken and handwritten word and a minimal colour palette blending into the austere environment of the gallery space. With this, the artists ask us to consider the fantasies that we use to animate and escape the routines of our daily lives.

Framing history as if haunted by its own mythology, cold call … questions whether we can let the past rest in peace. This exhibition is presented as part of Hypha Studios residency at Number 1 Poultry Street in Bank (1 of 3 exhibitions opening on the 23rd of April) and has been developed in site-specific response to the building. The space that cold call … takes place in, Hypha Studios Gallery 3, has been stripped of almost all markers that would allow visitors to identify what it was before becoming a white-walled art gallery space tucked between the striking salmon-pink-bricked facade of the Sir James Stirling designed building. The exhibition’s work has been arranged to hide in plain sight across the space drawing attention to it and inspiring speculation over its origins.

cold call … opens with the first public viewing on the 23rd of April 2026 from 6-9pm at Gallery 3, Hypha Studios, 1 Poultry Street, and then is open from Friday to Monday 24th of April to the 30th of May 2026. The exhibition will be accompanied by a public program of workshops and public events featuring artists Evie Savini, William Aghoghogbe and Tabs BW.