Exhibition Opening: Islands in the City

About This Event

Exhibition Opening: Islands in the City 

Thursday 25 September 2025, 18:00- 20:00

‘Islands in the City’ is a vibrant group exhibition celebrating contemporary Caribbean art and imagination, co-curated by Sherece Rainford (Gallery OCA) and Louis Chapple (Royal Over-Seas League). Taking place in the heart of London at ROSL’s historic Clubhouse, this ambitious show brings together a dynamic selection of artists working across painting, sculpture, collage, photography, and mixed media.

The exhibition explores the richness, resilience, and beauty of Caribbean identity through the lens of diaspora, memory, migration, and self-determined creativity. As the presence of Caribbean art continues to grow within the global art world, ‘Islands in the City’ offers a timely and joyful statement of cultural pride. The practices showcased in this exhibition speak to the richness and diversity of the Caribbean imaginary. The artworks, spanning a broad range of media and approaches, reflect both rootedness in island life and the expansive trajectories of diasporic movement. They articulate a language that is at once ancestral and speculative, grounded and visionary.

‘Islands in the City’ foregrounds Caribbean perspectives and amplifies their relevance within these ongoing conversations. The artists in this constellation carry with them cosmologies of memory, resistance, and renewal. Their work is a pulse that redefines how art occupies space and speaks to the world. Here, Caribbean art does not seek validation; it offers vision. It illuminates the now and projects the ‘not-yet’. It is presence, movement, rhythm. It is the future, dreamt and in motion. ‘Islands in the City’ builds on that momentum, bringing new voices and perspectives into view, and creating a space where Caribbean art can be celebrated on its own terms, at scale.

Islands in the City is on view in the Central Lounge, ROSL Clubhouse, London, from 26 September – 9 November 2025.