New Art at Kettle’s Yard
We are delighted to announce details of our exhibitions in 2025. In February we will host Paint What Matters!, an open call exhibition highlighting the talent of young people in our local community. From March – June a group show, Here is a Gale Warning, will feature contemporary artists from around the globe, followed by solo exhibitions by Lubaina Himid and Harold Offeh opening in July and November. Read on to find out more about these exceptional exhibitions.
Kettle’s Yard Director Andrew Nairne says:
We are thrilled to be presenting four unique exhibitions in 2025. From welcoming our local young people into the galleries, to seeing the return of Harold Offeh, who has been part of a number of group exhibitions here, we cannot wait to experience 2025 at Kettle’s Yard, and hope you will be joining us throughout.

Paint What Matters! Art by Children & Young People in Cambridge
26 February – 9 March 2025
Paint What Matters! is a unique exhibition at Kettle’s Yard celebrating the talent and creativity of children and young people in Cambridge. The exhibition will share the work of up to 1,000 young artists aged 4-21 years across our two galleries.
For this exhibition Kettle’s Yard invites children and young people in Cambridge to create artworks about what matters to them today, in any artistic style or medium, from local to global issues; from their home to our shared planet; from love for families, friends and communities to concern for nature, animals and the environment.
A selection of artworks created by Kettle’s Yard’s partner schools and community groups will also be on display.

Here is a Gale Warning: Art, Crisis & Survival
22 March – 29 June 2025
This exhibition presents eight contemporary artists whose works offer vantage points on a world in perpetual crisis. Rather than representing specific political events, or taking singular positions, each artist in this exhibition explores broader conditions of domination and conflict, as well as horizons for survival.
Here is a Gale Warning will feature works by Pia Arke, Justin Caguiat, Rose Finn-Kelcey, Candace Hill-Montgomery, Tomashi Jackson, Tarek Lakhrissi, Anne Tallentire, and Cecilia Vicuña. Together, their works invite us to gather and reflect on resilience and resistance.

Lubaina Himid with Magda Stawarska
12 July – 2 November 2025
This new exhibition by one of the UK’s most renowned and celebrated contemporary artists will present new paintings, a special installation made in collaboration with Magda Stawarska and ‘interventions’ in the Kettle’s Yard house.
Initially trained in theatre design, Himid is best known for her innovative approaches to painting and social engagement, playing a pivotal role in the British Black Arts movement since the 1980s. Over the last decade, she has earned international recognition for her figurative canvases, which explore overlooked and invisible aspects of history and contemporary daily life.
At Kettle’s Yard, her new work will centre on what is missing from the telling of life stories, who is left out of narratives, what strategies are used to fill in the gaps and the objects we choose to leave behind as clues.
There will also be a new installation that builds on Himid and Stawarska’s Blue Grid Test (2020), drawing on correspondence between writer and artist Sophie Brzeska and artist Nina Hamnett. Alongside smaller interventions, Himid will also show a new largescale painting in the Kettle’s Yard house.

Harold Offeh
15 November 2025 – 1 March 2026
The first major solo exhibition of Harold Offeh’s work in a UK institution, this exhibition will bring together a selection of works from the artist’s career, revealing ambitious projects that have taken place across the world.
For more than two decades, Offeh (b. 1977, Ghana) has been making playful, provocative performance and video works that explore subjects ranging from pop culture to identity and conformity.
Offeh draws from popular music, film and mainstream cultural trends to interrogate our acceptance of political, class, gender and racial models in society. Recently, his practice has approached themes of happiness, play and Afrofuturism through performance and collective live engagements.
New participatory elements will activate Kettle’s Yard’s galleries, drawing on the input of collaborators and communities through an energetic programme of performances, discussions and events.
