Notation II

Make Do/Make Space, curated by Nicholas Stavri

Hypha Gallery Southbank, London

Aug-Sep 2027

Make Do / Make Space is a rallying cry for a generation of self-starting artists who have refused to wait for museums, galleries, and cultural institutions to open up. At a time when public funding is shrinking, and institutional support remains out of reach for many, these artists have built their own communities, made do with limited resources, and made space where none existed.

The exhibition’s title references the wartime instruction to make do and mend, a phrase that asked people to work with what they had, to repair rather than discard, and to find resourcefulness in the face of scarcity. Reframed for a city of rising costs, disappearing studios, and shrinking public funding, it feels less like history and more like lived experience. The artists in Make Do / Make Space carry that same spirit into the present, working with whatever materials, spaces, and opportunities are available to them, and making something extraordinary from it. The works in this exhibition ask what it means to Make Do / Make Space. How circumstance shapes practice and how limitation breeds invention. From a found, rusted 1975 Ford Escort reborn as a kinetic sculpture, to building-site hoardings appropriated into installations carrying the history of the places they once guarded access, to foam mattresses transformed into monumental architectural follies. In each case, the artists have transformed a familiar material into something new, stripping it of its previous function and asking what else it might become, reflecting back the city they are working in: resourceful, resilient, and refusing to be written off.

“Make do” speaks to the resourcefulness of artists finding ways to keep working, without big budgets or reliable studio space, while “make space” captures both the literal act of finding and activating a room with art and the broader demand for visibility, recognition, and inclusion.

The works on show respond to both the exhibition space and the surrounding urban landscape, sitting with the tension between the city’s architecture and the day-to-day life of its inhabitants. At its core, Make Do / Make Space is about people as much as it is about objects. It reflects a community of artists who are not just making sculpture but actively shaping how art is made, shared, and experienced in the confines of a contemporary urban setting.

Text, Nicholas Stavri

Photography, Carlo Zambon