Exeter city centre sites set to showcase work from international artists
Phantom Threads is an exhibition of textiles which shows the role of labour, care, gender, and memory in craft
Sites across the centre of Exeter are set to be used to showcase work by international artists which reimagines how people can respond to current social, ecological and technological crises.
Textiles, maps, audio, film and photography with the theme of “repair” will be displayed at sites including the Underground Passages and Exeter Library.
The five contemporary art exhibitions and installations are organised by students on the MA Curation course at University of Exeter as part of their graduation projects.
“REWORLDING” exhibitions are open from the 5 to 14 June 2026, from 11 to 4pm daily. Other venues are the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies, at the University of Exeter; Unit 5 (the former Body Shop) in the Guildhall Shopping Centre and Positive Light Projects on Sidwell Street.
In Exeter Library Parish Maps: Then, Now, Next (curated by Rebecca Wood) revisits the Common Ground’s Parish Maps project within the context of contemporary Exeter to explore what it means to create maps of the city today. The 1987 project asked people to creatively map their local places and reflect upon what made them feel meaningful. Rather than focusing on roads or boundaries, they recorded the everyday and personal landscapes, memories, and stories that help shape a place. The exhibition brings together archival maps from the original project alongside newly commissioned and collaboratively produced works to show how mapping is a living, collective and ever-evolving practice shaped by many voices.
At the Institute of Arab & Islamic Studies ENDURANCE (curated by Niga Salam), is an exhibition of work by eight Kurdish artists which depicts everyday resilience in the face of on-going conflict in the region. The exhibition features film, photography, sound, installation, and performance.
At the former Body Shop in Exeter’s Guildhall Shopping Centre Ways of (Machine) Seeing (curated by Leixinyun Huang and Yifan Yang) presents the work of world-renowned Chinese artist, Xu Bing, alongside emerging practitioner, Ye Funa, to explore how digital culture has entered everyone’s lives. This includes the growing use of images instead of text, as well as surveillance and facial recognition technology.
In the Underground Passages When the Earth Holds Us Quietly (curated by Indie Hansford, Thea Perignon and Laila Ross) features sculpture, textile, audio and film from artists who have “listened” to the land and collaborated with it. It features natural, foraged, and found materials to show how earth and expression are woven together.
In Positive Light Projects Phantom Threads (curated by Kaia Brushaber, Liv Pattimore and Moyan Zhang) is an exhibition of textiles which shows the role of labour, care, gender, and memory in craft to give what is stereotypically seen as underappreciated ‘women’s work’ more visibility. Alongside it there will be a programme of free workshops and events teaching knitting, mending, and textile-based making, to encourage connections and skill-sharing across generations.
MA Curation: Contemporary Art and Cultural Management is an intensive one-year postgraduate taught course combining academic rigour and critical debate with professional training and practical experience. Students gain hands-on experience through internships, as well as field trips, and in the final term they have the option to either write a dissertation or organise a curatorial project of their own.
