THE NEW RARE — SUMMER 2026

THE NEW RARE EDITIONS occupies WC2E 9HA, a shared exhibition structure operating alongside Chequers / Gestures . The exhibition exists inside a space where bookselling, installation, storage, conversation, administration, display systems, and temporary cultural activity remain partially indistinguishable from one another.

The exhibition brings together framed reproductions, fluorescent lighting, monochromatic panels, replica furniture, damaged catalogues, removable walls, found publications, and displaced exhibition supports. The works do not attempt to stabilise themselves as singular autonomous objects. They remain close to props, placeholders, reconstructions, substitutes, secondary objects, and administrative material. The exhibition PDF is viewable via this link.

A corridor assembled from freestanding wall units runs through the exhibition. Visible threaded rods hold the structure together. Gaps between the walls allow light to leak through the system. Paintings become partially absorbed into the architecture itself. Books appear embedded within support structures rather than merely displayed upon them. The exhibition approaches display as something provisional: a condition of temporary assembly rather than permanence.

Several works repeat earlier forms without fully reproducing them. Dimensions remain identical while finishes shift slightly. One publication replaces another. Supports substitute for previous supports. A structure returns through approximation rather than exact replication. The work moves through resemblance, delegation, transfer, and reappearance.

Authorship remains intentionally unstable throughout the exhibition. Fabricators, installers, framers, photographers, assistants, handlers, transportation workers, and administrators become folded into the production structure itself. The exhibition is attributed to Beth Parkinson, Jodie Barnes, David Stearn, Dr. Matt Williams, Matthew Peers, and James Mullord under the administration of The New Rare.

The exhibition remains closely aligned with a post-authorship logic associated with Philippe Thomas: objects circulate before they stabilise; placement produces meaning; naming becomes transferable; authorship appears distributed across systems of presentation, administration, reproduction, and delegation rather than residing inside singular acts of creation.

Throughout the space, books, invitations, postcards, and printed matter appear less as references than as active structural components. Historical ephemera connected to conceptual art, artist publishing, downtown fashion, experimental music, Fluxus, post-minimalism, and mail art circulate through the exhibition as displaced signals from earlier economies of cultural production.

A damaged catalogue becomes sculpture through retention.
A fluorescent tube functions simultaneously as lighting and image.
A removable wall becomes both architecture and object.
A reproduction acquires autonomy through framing and placement.
An administrative gesture becomes sculptural through repetition.

The works remain interested in the unstable moment where support material exceeds its original task and begins operating differently: document becoming object, object becoming display system, display system becoming exhibition.

Nothing fully arrives.
Nothing fully disappears.

The exhibition behaves less like a fixed presentation than a temporary circulation structure assembled from retained material, delegated labour, replacement parts, and repeated forms.

Not quite archive.
Not quite exhibition.
Not quite shop.

A support system temporarily visible as an exhibition.