MKTPLC

MKTPLC operates across disciplines, united by a shared interest in storytelling, second-hand materials and informal networks of exchange. Sourcing objects from markets, car boot sales and other sites of circulation, the artists engage with materials that carry traces of ownership, labour and lived experience. Reactivated through artistic intervention, these objects become repositories of social and cultural histories, forming alternative archives that bring overlooked and discarded materials into new relationships and forms of visibility.

For this exhibition at Hypha Gallery South Bank, the marketplace provides both a conceptual framework and a material point of departure. The building’s skeletal structure and raw surfaces evoke the improvised character of London’s streets and markets, where temporary arrangements and informal exchanges shape the urban environment. MKTPLC responds to these conditions through the use of market fabric and the arrangement of objects and materials, drawing parallels between the gallery and the city beyond its walls. The exhibition becomes a space of exchange, where things accumulate, overlap and circulate, gathering new meanings through their encounters with people and place.

As Henri Lefebvre argues in The Production of Space (1974), ‘social space is a social product’. Markets are therefore understood not simply as sites of commerce, but as environments shaped by human interaction, labour and shared occupation. MKTPLC draws on this understanding to explore how value, meaning and community emerge through the movement of objects and the relationships they facilitate.

Bringing the logic of the MKTPLC into Hypha Gallery South Bank, the exhibition challenges the conventions of the white cube and its associations with neutrality and established hierarchies of value. Instead, it embraces density, informality, reuse and exchange, reflecting an ethos of resourcefulness and collective production. The gallery becomes an active environment of circulation and encounter, where objects and stories intersect with the architecture and surrounding urban landscape. Inviting audiences to reconsider the overlooked textures of everyday life, MKTPLC explores the social networks, histories and exchanges through which objects and places acquire meaning.