Collaborations
Opening: Sat 11 April - 2026
12.00-4pm
Exhibition runs from 11 April to 9 May 2026. Amici Studio is open Wed-Fri 11am-3pm and Sat 12-4pm.
Amici Studio, 12 Claremont, Hastings TN34 1HA
Declarative Language | Curated by Kelly Jessiman and Alexis Soul-Gray
Declarative Language is a group exhibition curated by Kelly Jessiman and Alexis Soul-Gray, bringing together artists whose practices have been shaped by sustained caregiving within families of neurodivergent children. Emerging from shared lived experience, the exhibition does not centre on disclosure or testimony. Instead, it considers how prolonged responsibility, compressed time and heightened attention act as catalysts for artistic transformation.
For the artists in this exhibition, daily life is structured around unpredictability, adaptation and care. Time becomes fractured and non-linear; energy is finite. Under these conditions, artistic practice cannot operate according to conventional expectations of productivity or autonomy. Instead, it is reconfigured. Materials, processes and gestures take on heightened significance. Decisions are sharpened. Making becomes precise, intuitive and responsive — a form of thinking and communicating where language alone is insufficient.
Declarative Language proposes that these conditions do not diminish artistic practice but actively reshape it. Constraint accelerates invention; compression forces clarity. Material choices become a form of language, declarative in their insistence, economy and refusal to explain themselves. Across sculpture, painting, installation and moving image, the works in the exhibition demonstrate how practices evolve when they must coexist with care, rather than sit apart from it.
The act of making in this context becomes a form of co-regulation, a means of stabilisation, attention and connection. It can also function as a necessary form of escape: a temporary inhabiting of another rhythm or space that is neither selfish nor avoidant, but sustaining. This is not an escape from responsibility, nor a denial of crisis; rather, it is a way of remaining present and responsive, maintaining the capacity to engage with the world even as its structures prove inadequate or exclusionary.
Artists:
Edie Flowers
Nicola Hicks MBE
Kelly Jessiman
Mindy Lee
Natasha Macvoy
Kate Montgomery
Anj Smith
Alexis Soul-Gray
Maliheh Zafarnezhad
About the Curators
Alexis Soul-Gray (b. 1980, UK) is an artist based in Devon. She graduated from the Royal College of Art (MA Painting, 2023) and Camberwell College of Arts. Soul-Gray creates deeply layered paintings that explore memory, loss and maternal lineage through an innovative practice combining painting, collage and unconventional material processes. Working from found imagery sourced from vintage knitting catalogues and domestic manuals, she constructs emotionally charged surfaces that hover between abstraction and figuration.
Her work is held in the permanent collection of Moderna Museet, Stockholm, and has been exhibited internationally at Eiklid + Rusten, Norway; Bel Ami, Los Angeles; Wetterling Gallery, Stockholm; The Arts Club, London; and Bo Lee and Workman, Bruton.
Recent press coverage includes The Art Newspaper, Financial Times, Forbes and Plaster Magazine. Soul-Gray is also a recipient of two Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grants.
Kelly Jessiman is an artist based in St Leonards-on-Sea, primarily working in clay. She holds a BA in Fine Art Sculpture from Camberwell School of Art. Jessiman’s hand built vessels act as tactile records of domestic resilience and the human need for expression. Rejecting industrial ceramic perfection, she embraces the irregularities of coil building techniques applied to traditional forms. Drawing on the history of graffiti, from Ancient Rome to contemporary school desks, she writes and draws directly onto her pots, treating mark making as a universal language that reflects hardship and the rhythms of everyday life. Layered with ancient symbols such as witches’ marks, her vessels become objects of protection, endurance and hope.
Her work has been exhibited at De La Warr Pavilion, Hastings Contemporary, Milieu Studios, Livingstone St Ives, Georgia Stoneman Gallery, Big Yin and FELT, and is stocked by Dover Street Market, London; McCully & Crane, Rye; MAH Gallery, London; Felt Gallery, London; Charleston House, Firle; and Schumacher, France and USA.
Recent press includes Vogue, The World of Interiors, House & Garden (25 Rising Stars), The Violet Book, ROSA Magazine, RyeZine, The Wick Culture and Twin Magazine.
