Current Exhibition

HOW WE BUILD A HOME - Lakwena Maciver
15 October – 14 December 2025

Vigo Gallery and English Heritage present HOW WE BUILD A HOME, a vibrant new exhibition of cardboard and bead paintings by celebrated artist Lakwena Maciver at the iconic Wellington Arch.

Lakwena’s practice has long blended art, design, fashion, and spirituality, reaching audiences far beyond traditional galleries. Her murals and public works, from the Bowery Wall in New York to installations at Tate and Somerset House, have made her one of the most recognisable artists of her generation. Lakwena’s work often engages with public spaces to interrupt or reframe those environments, bringing gently subversive messages and bold colour into areas often defined by institutional or historical weight.

In a new body of work crafted from found cardboard boxes and plastic beads, the artist transforms remnants of trade into vibrant graphic paintings – recasting the language of commerce into bold affirmations and reminders of hope, beauty and home. These materials, seemingly modest but rich in narrative, were sourced from Ridley Road Market, which is beneath Lakwena’s studio and nearby her home in East London. This iconic London street market has been home to many different communities over time and is now known for its African and Caribbean hair shops and food stalls, making it a vital hub of Black British culture and everyday life.

By presenting this most recent body of work at Wellington Arch, a historic monument once intended as a gateway to London, Lakwena invites reflection on how this symbol of Britain’s past might also connect with the many different identities and stories that shape the country today. The Arch, designed to represent military victory and Britain’s global influence, stands as a reminder of authority and national pride. Yet, atop the structure is a statue of the angel of peace descending on a chariot of war, an image that gently suggests the complexities of power and the hope for coming together.

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Past exhibitions include: 

• Push / Pull, by Lucienne O’Mara and Johnny Abrahams, a joint exhibition of new paintings by artists whose practices negotiate the interplay between control and order.
• Edenism, by Leonhard Hurzlmeier. Drawing from Medieval and Renaissance art, particularly Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel, Hurzlmeier sees the Eden narrative as a metaphor for humanity's evolution from hunter-gatherer culture to civilisation.
• CRISPR @ 80, by Duncan MacAskill. Duncan MacAskill’s ongoing DNA paintings series which lies at the core of his practice.
  
• Haraz, by Ibrahim El-Salahi . Comprised of works from both El-Salahi's celebrated Tree series, many of which featured in his 2013 Tate Modern retrospective, and more recent Pain Relief works on paper and canvas, the exhibition reflects El-Salahi’s fascination with the Haraz tree, indigenous to Sudan.
• Prost, by Henry Krokatsis. The exhibition included an installation that transformed the interior space of Wellington Arch. In place of fine hardwoods, Krokatsis’ functional yet subversive remake of the floor used two tonnes of discarded material.
• Invincible Summer, by Erin Lawlor. The exhibition depicted snapshots of windows of time in the studio and come to encapsulate that peculiar life-drive that goes hand in hand with the hardest of times.

• In and Through, by Matthew Burrows. The exhibition included larger scale works by Matthew Burrows, the fruition of his In and Through series which he developed during the COVID pandemic.  

• Vertical Planes, by artist Jordy Kerwick. Vertical Planes is a playful reaction to history - or alternate histories - of Wellington Arch and some of the characters immortalised by it.

• Pain Relief, by artist Ibrahim El-Salahi. Work on display was created by the Sudanese Oxford-based artist between 2016-2018 from the comfort of an armchair when he refused to let physical restriction limit his ambition.