A Room for Keepsakes: Basil Beattie, Zoë Carlon, Ally Fallon, Carole Gibbons, Richard Slee and Zach Toppin.
Hales is delighted to announce A Room for Keepsakes, a group show featuring works by Basil Beattie, Zoë Carlon, Ally Fallon, Carole Gibbons, Richard Slee and Zach Toppin. The exhibition brings together a cross-generational group of UK based artists exploring interior scenes imbued with psychological meaning.
A Room for Keepsakes offers a meditation on the spaces we inhabit, both physical and psychological. The artists in the exhibition explore perception, memory and identity through interior scenes, where domestic and public settings are laden with ideas, narrative and imagery. Depictions of rooms, space and objects communicate a deep inner life, devoid of people but not presence.
In Beattie’s paintings, pictorial elements hold significant meaning and psychological implications through the manipulation of painted surface. Throughout his career, Beattie has returned repeatedly to motifs of steps, ladders and staircases, where the motion is upward and on the diagonal. Not only are these images metaphorical vehicles in Beattie's personal arsenal but also formal tools which have shaped some of his most dynamic works.
Carlon’s painterly process is slow and considered as she builds the surface of her works in layers of oil on aluminium. Her quiet, contemplative scenes capture fleeting instants of stillness, inviting engaged and sustained observation.
Fallon’s compositions combine structure and spontaneity rooted in personal experience, where rooms with tiled floors are a space for gestural mark making. Tangible scenes with a deep sense of perspective are intersected with painterly abstraction and geometry creating an uncanny presence.
Gibbons’ still life paintings are poetic, tender and mystical, imbued with imagination and subconscious. Her work is charged with psychological intensity, where boundaries between space and her treasured objects dissolve, revealing a world both familiar and dreamlike.
For Slee the ceramic objects he makes are intrinsically about the domestic interior and a love for the ‘great indoors.’ There are references in the work to the decorative, the ornamental and the symbolic both from past histories and within contemporary culture. Through his surreal transformations of ordinary domestic objects, Slee’s work also explores questions of personal and national identity.
Toppin’s paintings are saturated with cultural reference, narrative and symbolism in carefully crafted compositions. In contemporary still lifes Toppin explores queer identity, desire and longing through meaningful objects. There is a sense of a person who has just left the scene or out of view, with remnants of a moment left behind.
Beattie's (b.1935)work has been featured in numerous exhibitions at prestigious institutions, including solo shows at Tate Britain, London, UK; Royal Academy of Arts, London, UK; Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art, UK; Jerwood Gallery, Hastings, UK; IKON Gallery, Birmingham, UK; Castlefield Gallery, Manchester, UK; Sadler's Wells Theatre, London, UK; and Goldsmiths Gallery, London, UK. His works have been included in critical group exhibitions at the Barbican Centre, London, UK; Camden Arts Centre, London, UK as well as the Jerwood Painting Prize 1998 and 2001 at Jerwood Gallery, London, UK; and Gallery of Modern Art, Glasgow, UK; and John Moores Painting Prize exhibition in 2015, 2016 and 2017 at Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, UK. Beattie's work can be found in numerous public and private collections including Arts Council England; Tate collections; Contemporary Art Society; Deutsche Bank; Government Art Collection; NatWest Group Art; Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester; Royal Academy Collection; and the Jerwood Collection, all UK.
Carlon (b.1993) recently had a solo show Where and When You Are at South Parade, London, UK (2024), was featured in group show The Good Intent at Guest Gallery, Brookyln, NY, USA (2024) and took part in the Xenia Creative Retreat Residency. From 2021-2022 she was the Tetley Associate Artist at The Tetley, Leeds. She has been included in group shows, Moving In at Super Super Markt, Berlin, Germany (2023); What we make where with Joshua Armitage at Hyde Park Art Club Leeds and AMP Gallery London (2023). In 2022, she had a solo show Strange Comfort at South Parade and was featured in Material Poetics, South Parade x The Shop at Sadie Coles HQ, London, UK. Carlon’s work is in the collections of the Government Art Collection, UK; FUAM Collection, University of Leeds, UK; X Museum, Beijing, China.
Fallon (b.1998) has been named the winner of the 2025 John Moore’s Painting Prize, becoming the youngest artist to win the prestigious award. He will have a solo exhibition at the Walker Art Gallery in 2026. In 2024, he was part of Louise Giovanelli’s Apollo Painting School programme and in 2025 the subsequent group show at Alice Amati. In 2025 he had a duo show with Jack Ginno, Here or There or Elsewhere at Heaven 11, Manchester. He was the 2023 Artist in Residence at Joya: AiR, in southeastern Spain. He has exhibited in a number of group shows across the UK, including HOME, Manchester; The FG Gallery, Cheshire; and Boomer Gallery, London.
Gibbons’ (b. 1935) first solo exhibition in the US opened at White Columns in 2024. She was featured in the blockbuster touring show Women in Revolt! Art and Activism in the UK 1970-1990, which originated at Tate Britain and toured to National Galleries Scotland (2023 - 2025). In 2023, Gibbons first monograph was published by 5b. Receiving early career success between the 1960s-1980s, she was the first living woman to have a solo exhibition at Glasgow's Third Eye Centre in 1975. In 2012 Lucy Stein staged two exhibitions including Gibbons, a group show, Strohwitwe, Glasgow and Lucy Stein: Manderley with Carole Gibbons: Paintings and Drawings at Gimpel Fils, London. Gibbons’ works are held in collections across the United Kingdom, in the National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh; City Art Centre, Edinburgh; Glasgow Museums; Inverness Museum and Art Gallery; Hunterian Art Gallery, Glasgow; Aberdeen Art Gallery; Low Parks Museum, Hamilton; The Argyll Collection, Oban; Leeds Museums and Galleries.
Slee (b.1946) has had solo exhibitions at Tate St Ives; the Victoria and Albert Museum; Sainsbury Centre; Studio Voltaire; National Museum, Stockholm, Sweden; and more. His solo exhibition, Richard Slee: Mantlepiece Observations opened in 2021 at Bolton Museum, UK which toured to Hove Museum and Art Gallery, UK. He has been featured in group shows at Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris; Rian Design Museum, Sweden; The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, UK; Design Museum Den Bosch, the Netherlands; Somerset House, London, UK; Hayward Gallery, UK; Tate Liverpool, UK; Baltimore Museum of Art, UK; Whitechapel Gallery, UK and many more. Slee's work is represented in numerous collections world-wide, including British Council UK; Museum of Arts and Design, NY, USA; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, CA, USA; Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto, Japan; Shigaraki Ceramic Cultural Park, Japan; National Museum, Stockholm, Sweden; Stedelijk Museum, the Netherlands; The Art Institute of Chicago, IL, USA; and Victoria & Albert Museum, London, UK.
Toppin (b.1987) was recently featured in group show Talisman curated by Gemma Rolls-Bentley with E-J Scott presented by Cardion Arts in partnership with The Museum of Transology (2025). He has also been included in A Feast For The Eyes at Guts Gallery, London (2024), The Witch Burns at Tin Man Art, The Fitzrovia Chapel (2024) and Tales from the Riverbank at Tin Man Art (2023). His work (I was a cliff, then a rock, then a stone, then a pebble, then sand, then a) Pearl (2023-2024) is currently featured on a billboard in Dalston, London.
