Joy Gregory’s images exhibition opens at Whitechapel Gallery

Courtesy of WHITECHAPEL GALLERY

A landmark second for up to date British artwork, Catching Flies with Honey, the brand new Joy Gregory’s images exhibition, has opened at London’s Whitechapel Gallery. Running from October eighth, 2025 to March 1st, 2026, the present marks the primary main retrospective of Gregory’s four-decade profession — and provides an unflinching, poetic exploration of magnificence, race, and illustration by images, movie, set up, and textiles.

Exploring materiality and that means in Joy Gregory images

Winner of the Freelands Award, Joy Gregory has lengthy been considered one of many UK’s most revolutionary voices in feminist artwork and photographic follow. Her work spans from early self-portraiture to advanced, multi-sensory installations, uniting social commentary with putting visible magnificence. Gregory’s strategy, because the exhibition title suggests, is one in all quiet persuasion — utilizing attract and aesthetics to interact audiences with difficult concepts.

In early works corresponding to Autoportrait (1990), she makes use of fragments of her personal picture — lips, eyes, and fingers — to query who’s seen, who’s invisible, and the way magnificence is outlined. Objects of Beauty (1992–1995) and Girl Thing (2002–2004) flip trend equipment and silk undergarments into cyanotype prints, exploring how femininity is carried out by materials tradition. By reworking on a regular basis objects into delicate blue-hued compositions, Gregory blurs the road between the non-public and the political, intimacy and critique.

Feminist artwork, reminiscence, and the politics of illustration

While Joy Gregory’s early tasks dissect magnificence beliefs and media imagery, later works delve into broader narratives of colonialism, language, and cultural reminiscence. In Seeds of Empire (2021), a collaboration with composer Philip Miller, Gregory combines textual content, shifting picture, and sound to replicate on how collections at establishments just like the British Museum have been constructed on colonial exploration and exploitation.

Meanwhile, The Blonde (1997–2010) takes the archetype of the “ideal woman” — the blonde — and turns it inside out. Through images, movie, and located objects, Gregory exposes how racialised and gendered magnificence requirements are constructed, perpetuated, and resisted. Elsewhere, Cinderella Tours Europe (1998–2001) imagines a pair of golden slippers touring throughout European landmarks — a witty but poignant reflection on exclusion, aspiration, and the legacies of empire.

A defining second for Joy Gregory

Bringing collectively over 250 works throughout 4 a long time, Catching Flies with Honey reaffirms Joy Gregory’s pivotal position in increasing what images — and particularly feminist artwork — can specific. Her use of each historic and digital strategies, from Victorian cyanotypes to video and sound, displays a lifelong curiosity about how supplies and that means intertwine.

The exhibition is accompanied by a richly illustrated monograph that includes essays from main students, situating Gregory’s follow inside world discourses on race, gender, and the politics of seeing.