GOVINDA SAH 'AZAD': Journey to the Heart of Light 4 December, 2025 – 24 January, 2026.

LINEAGES 29 January – 28 February, 2026.

DREAM NO SMALL DREAM: The Story of October GalleryAvailable from our Book Store. £40 + P&P304 pages, full colour plates throughout. Edited by Gerard Houghton.

October Gallery and the Café will close for the winter holidays from Tuesday, 23rd December, 2025, and will reopen to the public on Tuesday, 6th January, 2026.

For sales enquiries during this period, please contact:

CURRENT EXHIBITION

GOVINDA SAH 'AZAD':
Journey to the Heart of Light

4 December, 2025 – 24 January, 2026

**Govinda Sah 'Azad'**, *Incandescence*, 2025.
Tropical hardwood and tempera, Acrylic on canvas, 180 x 140 cm.

**Govinda Sah 'Azad'**, *Mountain to Margate*, 2025.
Tropical hardwood and tempera, Acrylic on canvas, 180 x 160 cm.

October Gallery presents its fifth solo exhibition of compelling works by Govinda Sah ‘Azad’, a Nepalese artist now working in Margate. This exhibition highlights Sah’s latest large-scale oil and acrylic paintings on canvas and presents selected smaller scale works. Journey to the Heart of Light weaves together the artist’s personal journeys through both inner and outer realms. Beginning his artistic career in the Himalayan mountains close to where he was born, Sah first moved to London to study at Wimbledon College of Arts, before moving from London to Margate, where he recently opened a purpose-built studio. Although seemingly unconnected, the landlocked peaks of the high Himalaya and the tumultuous seascapes of Margate are connected in Sah’s imagination by the atmospheric clouds that envelop them, which upon parting reveal dynamic vistas illuminated by shafts of light below. Sah’s intensely detailed work is filled with an inner light, one that he first admired in the expressive radiance he found in J. M. W. Turner’s oil paintings, particularly around the coasts of Margate. Sah’s paintings, although different both in design and execution, afford tantalising reflections of the light that guided him to follow in the English Master’s footsteps as he, too, travelled from spectacular mountain views to draw inspiration from Margate’s dramatic seascapes.

Fascinated by the changing qualities of light playing through various layers of cloud, Sah represents his shifting experiences of the outer environment to explore more subtle emotional changes occurring within his ‘inner landscape.’ The artist’s works are composed of densely interwoven layers of mark-making that build layer upon layer of oil and acrylic paints upon the canvas. For Sah, as the painted surface becomes saturated with detailed layers, the reiterative act of painting resolves into a meditation on the complex enigmas of life itself. Sah states, ‘Painting becomes this continual process of losing myself...During these dialogues (with the painting), ideas arise within me, surfacing through the mysterious process of painting. Knowledge exists outside all of us and, for me, painting is the activity by which I reach out to discover it.’

View Artist Page View Exhibition Page

FORTHCOMING EXHIBITION

Lineages

29 January - 28 February, 2026

**Susanne Kessler**, *014 - layered from 2007 onwards: 4 layers*, 2017 - 2025.
Charcoal, ink, printed foil, thread on paper, 21 × 29.5 cm.

**Eleanor Lakelin**, *Landscape 2*, 2025.
Sequoia, iron-stained, 38 x 38 x 28cm.
Phot: Evan Mason

October Gallery presents Lineages which brings together the work of Susanne Kessler, Elisabeth Lalouschek, Theresa Weber, Golnaz Fathi, Tian Wei, El Anatsui, Gerald Wilde and includes for the first time, striking works by Eleanor Lakelin, Junko Mori, and Bev Butkow. The exhibition explores the employment of line within these artists’ practice, in which the notion of line is not confined to the drawn mark, but emerges as a connective thread in concept and form.

Each selected work examines where lines become pathways across histories, environment, languages and materials: Susanne Kessler’s works on paper, collages, paintings, sculptures and installations investigate line - in all its manifestations, while Elisabeth Lalouschek’s abstract compositions are rooted in gesture, rhythm and the physical act of mark-making.

Two new relief paintings presented by Theresa Weber reflect her conceptual approach to the ever-changing nexus of identity and lineage. These works reveal an intuitive mapping of the intersectional body from a de-colonial perspective that resists the Western idea of the ‘grid’ or linear time in favour of organic forms, energy fields and circular time as an act of resistance.

Other works exhibited celebrate line within nature’s formations, such as works by Eleanor Lakelin and Junko Mori. Guided by nature, both Lakelin and Mori understand line as a transformational tool, whether carved into or built upon, using it as a means of wayfinding through the evolving dialogue of sculptural creation.

Bev Butkow’s work transgresses the boundaries between textile art, painting, sculpture and installation. She works experimentally across and between these genres, using weaving as a literal and figurative process that connects the material, the personal and the social.

Work by Golnaz Fathi explores the potential for overlap and exchange between the quite separate domains of modernist abstraction and classical Persian calligraphy, while Tian Wei’s detailed paintings explore the intersection of language, philosophy and abstraction. Within El Anatsui’s Earth struggling to grow roots and leaves, 2023, the viewer sees bottle tops layered together with coloured lines reaching out across the work, masterfully sewn together with copper wire to create a dynamic wall hanging sculpture. For British artist Gerald Wilde line for was both expressive and architectural, carving out space while also embodying raw emotion.

Each artist charts a unique course through the conceptual and literal activation of line. The works in Lineages invite viewers to consider how artists use line through gesture and materiality and furthermore, as a form of ways that unpacks culture, nature, identity and imagination.

View Exhibition Page

NEWS, EVENTS & RECOMMENDATIONS

El Anatsui at Louisiana Museum of Modern Art

2nd December, 2025 – 6th April, 2026

Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk, Denmark

We are delighted to share that the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art has acquired Akua’s Surviving Children (1996) by El Anatsui. The work is now featured in the museum’s newly unveiled exhibition of over 130 pieces.

During a visit to Denmark in 1996, Anatsui discovered driftwood washed ashore in Hellebæk. The weathered logs immediately evoked, for him, the people torn from West Africa by the Danish slave trade — “torn from their land source into wild, hostile sea, tossed about, eventually returning to land with experiences of their ordeal.” Over the following days, he gathered more than thirty logs, creating a powerful memorial to a clan of survivors.

Nearly three decades later, the installation returns to Denmark’s coastline—now in the care of Louisiana Museum—where its origin and meaning resonate even more deeply.

Installation View of Akua’s Surviving Children (1996) by El Anatsui. Courtesy of Louisiana Museum of Modern Art.

Photo by Camilla Stephan

GALLERY TALK:
Govinda Sah 'Azad' in Conversation with Katie Hill.

Saturday, 17th January, 2026
3.00 – 4.30 pm

Join Govinda Sah ‘Azad’ in discussion with Dr. Katie Hill, Academic Lead, Asia and Senior Lecturer at Sotheby’s Institute of Art, on the occasion of his solo exhibition, Journey to the Heart of Light at October Gallery.

This exhibition highlights Sah’s latest large-scale oil and acrylic paintings on canvas and presents selected smaller scale works. Journey to the Heart of Light weaves together the artist’s personal journeys through both inner and outer realms. Beginning his artistic career in the Himalayan mountains close to where he was born, Sah first moved to London to study at Wimbledon College of Arts, before moving from London to Margate, where he recently opened a purpose-built studio.

The conversation will examine Sah’s creative process and unpack the influence of the different environments that the artist has lived in upon his artistic progress.

The talk takes place on the gallery’s ground floor and has disabled access.

Reserve your place

El Anatsui at Nigerian Modernism

Tate Modern
8th October, 2025 – 10th May, 2026

Tate Modern presents Nigerian Modernism, a landmark exhibition celebrating the artists who transformed modern art in Nigeria during the mid-20th century. The exhibition will include some of El Anatsui’s early wooden wall-hanging sculptures, such as Leopard's Paw Prints and Other Stories.

Created throughout the 1980s and 90s, these remarkable relief works reveal the beginnings of Anatsui’s signature style. Using richly hued tropical hardwoods—variously charred, carved and painted—the artist forged wall-hangings that occupy a space between painting and sculpture, anticipating the shimmering metal tapestries for which he later became renowned.

El Anatsui, Leopard's Paw Prints and Other Stories, 1991. Tropical hardwoods, 43.5 (H) x 93 (W) x 17 (D) cm.

Holiday Closure

23 December - 6 January

October Gallery and the Café will close for the winter holidays from Tuesday, 23rd December, 2025, and will reopen to the public on Tuesday, 6th January, 2026.

Wishing everyone a joyful holiday season!

LR Vandy at Yorkshire Sculpture Park, 2026

From 14th March, 2026 The Weston Gallery, The Weston, YSP

Next spring, Yorkshire Sculpture Park will present Rise, the first solo museum exhibition by LR Vandy. Through her distinctive use of rope and found materials, Vandy transforms everyday objects into powerful reflections on migration, resilience and global interconnectedness.

Much of the rope featured in the exhibition draws on her proximity to the Historic Dockyard in Chatham—home to the UK’s last working Ropery, where rope has been produced using the same techniques for over four centuries.

Spinning a Yarn by LR Vandy, 2025

El Anatsui: 'Go Back and Pick'
Virtual Tour

Explore our recent exhibition virtually

View photographs and watch the Cocktail Preview Opening Speeches, whilst immersed in a explorable, high resolution recording of the exhibition
El Anatsui: 'Go Back and Pick'

Vistit the Virtual Gallery

December Catalogue Offer

Throughout December, enjoy 25% off all available exhibition catalogues in our online store.

Use the coupon code octobergallery2025 to apply the discount.

This includes the newly published El Anatsui: Go Back and Pick, featuring a text by Gus Casely-Hayford. The catalogue traces Anatsui’s remarkable artistic trajectory — from his early explorations in wood to the monumental, genre-defining metal works that have transformed the landscape of contemporary sculpture.

Browse here

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VISIT OCTOBER GALLERY

Bloomsbury, London

October Gallery has been instrumental in bringing to worldwide attention many of the world’s leading international artists, including El Anatsui, Rachid Koraïchi, Romuald Hazoumè, Nnenna Okore, Laila Shawa and Kenji Yoshida. The Gallery promotes the Transvangarde, the very best in contemporary art from around the planet, as well as maintaining a cultural hub in central London for poets, writers, intellectuals and artists, and hosts talks, performances and seminars, see www.octobergallery.co.uk/events

The rich diversity of art presented is an inspiration to collectors and enthusiasts. Institutions such as the British Museum, London; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Museum Kunstpalast, Düsseldorf, Germany; Neue Galerie, Kassel, Germany; Setagagya Art Museum, Tokyo, Japan have all collected works from October Gallery.

Founded in 1979, October Gallery is a charitable trust which is supported by sales of art, rental of the Gallery's unique facilities, grants from various funding bodies and the active support of dedicated artists, musicians, writers and many friends from around the world. The Gallery’s Education Department is inclusive of all ages from under 5’s to PGCE student and delivers a wide range of provision, see www.octobergalleryeducation.com

October Gallery is open from 12:30 to 17:30 pm, Tuesday to Saturday.
The Gallery is closed during official holidays and the entire month of August.

October Gallery Cafe is open from 12:30 pm – 2:30 pm, Tuesday to Friday.

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ACCESSIBILITY

There are two steps at the main entrance, each has a rise of 160mm and a 310mm tread (no handrail). The main entrance push door is 750mm wide.
Assisted or ramp access at the Gallery’s main entrance is available upon request.

Chairs can be found in the Gallery space.
The refectory is fully accessible by wheelchair.
Access to the courtyard has a 100mm ramp down coming from the corridor door.
There is also an accessible toilet in the Courtyard.

October Gallery is a Grade II listed building and therefore has no lift access to rooms above the ground floor. This includes the Theatre, the Clubroom and the first floor.

We welcome all visitors and will do our best to accommodate specific needs. Please do let us know in advance if there is anything in particular, we can help with. Call + 44 (0)20 7242 7367 or email gallery@octobergallery.co.uk preferably a day in advance.

October Gallery Education supported by:

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