Trifle.
Adam Linn
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weecolors
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Josie Perry + Daphne Simons
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Adam Linn 〰️ weecolors 〰️ Josie Perry + Daphne Simons 〰️
Fri 26 - Sun 28 June 2026
11am-5pm
Private View: Friday 26th June, 6-9pm
You enter Trifle through the playground of a Victorian school into a noughties gym hall, replete with climbing bars, basketball hoops and floor tape. The space, for some, may evoke one of the most painful and torturous environments of adolescence. Whether you were pretending to be straight or doodling in the back of textbooks, school is a pivotal and confusing moment in all of our lives. It marks the beginning of realising you might be different from your peers, a moment of searching for acceptance and sometimes another stage of a queer person’s exclusion and isolation.
Trifle brings together the work of four queer artists who share their exposed imagination, unleashing bizarre figures, animals and settings which can at times be unsettling or arousing. Each artist confidently indulgences in the absurd. The athleticism of completing a highly focused piece of work is sometimes disguised by its colourful or whimsical sensibilities but makes them no less examples of creative and physical achievements.
Objectivity, tradition and norms are refused while play is foregrounded in the artists’ work. Their pieces are characterised by escapist fantasies, symbolic iterations of desire and by a degree of sincere love for their mediums and their subjects. This turns the regulated purpose of the school gym on its head and allows for expectations to be inverted, freedom, merriment and laughter to ensue.
Curated by Thomas Rhys Dixon
With special thanks to Miller Schulman
All Welcome
Artists
Josie Perry + Daphne Simons
Began their creative process by channeling inspirations, obsessions and oddities. The artists become conduits for contemporary culture, as well as characters from art and queer history, distilling these disparate references into a shared script. These scripts become the basis for comics, and the upcoming edition is the source for the drawings exhibited here. Perry and Simons have a penchant for textures, fabrics and reflections rendered with considered draftsmanship in coloured pencil. The intricate surfaces are awash with minute details, demonstrating a mannerist virtuosity and flare for making the most impossible and fantastical scenes almost tangible.
Adam Linn
Similarly informed by his attunement to his environment. Linn finds himself animating the inanimate, often drawing upon architectural and design fixtures and fittings, warping them and drawing out their seductive potential. Coloured pencil is used in his drawings to impress upon the viewer the inviting tactility of his inventions. Adolescence brings up connotations of invasive medical procedures for Linn leading the viewer to consider the slippages between machinery and our own biological plumbing.
weecolors
The works here are the next in a series exploring masculine figures and gay stereotypes. Reminiscent of Saturday morning cartoons with their bold outlines and rounded features, weecolors’ characters also draw upon a distinctly English painting tradition, citing influences such as Edward Burra and J.W. Turner. weecolors’ sailors engage in unheroic acts, sleeping in peaceful reverie or dozing even while entrapped.They subvert their duties and roles through their leisurely disobedience. weecolors contrasts the macho man’s persona with his potential for gentleness and tenderness, the masculinities of the subjects softened by their considered rendering in watercolour. The addition of nautical elements like spoked wheels, boats and lighthouses aid the escapist journey these artworks take us on, locating the viewer in a maritime environment filled with adventurous potential.
Access information: Accessible, non-gender toilets, step-free access, wheelchair accessible, guide – dog friendly (applies to ground floor of main building and Arts Network building only)
Ages: All Ages
Parking: There is no parking onsite, accessible parking can be arranged in advance. Free parking on street (weekends and evenings only)
Where: Art Hub Studios, Stanley Street, SE8 4BL
Public Transport: New Cross Station (5 mins), Deptford Station (10 mins). Bus Stop ( 2 mins)
Cycling: Racks on site
Enquiries: info@arthub.org.uk
Socials: @ArtHubLondon