Holding The Shadow While Calling Back The Light: Benjamin Sebastian, 11 April - 10 May 2025

30 May

Benjamin Sebastian (b. 1980, Cairns, Australia. Lives and works in London, UK) brought their new show to 1853 Studios as Mill 2 Gallery’s opening show. Mill 2 Gallery is a brand new purpose built gallery and event space over 100sqm in the heart of our studios, find out more here.

Benjamin brought their show after touring in Canterbury (Herbert Read Gallery), Kent (CT20) and London (VSSL Studio). This show is their largest solo presentation in the UK to date, and we are thrilled to be the first to present the work up North.

In 2024, Benjamin underwent a three-week residency here at 1853 Studios, which marked the early stages of this exhibition's development. Their residency in Oldham was central to exploring the exhibition's themes, directly connecting to their father's journey from Oldham to Australia after the Second World War through the 'Ten Pound Pom' scheme. During the residency, they explored their Oldham heritage for the first time, creating site responsive works in our historic cotton mill. This residency built upon a previous residency undertaken in Australia, which linked these two parts of the artist’s heritage. The collection of works in this exhibition are the product of Benjamin’s exploration of heritage, (de)colonialism and identity.

“I’m so excited to bring this work back to Oldham, a place deeply woven into both my family’s story and the narrative of this exhibition. Working with cotton and calico — materials that carry the weight of Oldham’s cotton mills and the wider colonial systems they fed — has felt like holding history in my hands. The speculative, patchwork, and assemblage qualities of these textiles echo other aspects of my practice, which explore queerness and neurodiversity. I hope the work resonates with people on an emotional level, and I look forward to the conversations that will emerge.”

“This predominantly new body of work by Benjamin Sebastian confronts their ancestral implication in violent structures of settler-colonialism, while holding space for a spiritually expansive understanding of our relationship to the world around us and the forces that shape it through multiple forms of coloniality. This exhibition reveals a visual language of stitch, pattern, symbolism and hybridity, developed to unravel complex personal and political histories...” - Jane Scarth