Luce Bergman; Apologues and Dykeland; Sarah-Joy Ford will launch Saturday 7th June.
The Whitaker Museum and Art Gallery invites visitors to experience two powerful and thought-provoking new exhibitions that challenge, celebrate and reimagine identity, tradition, and community.
Opening with a public preview on Saturday 7th June (2pm), the exhibitions, Apologues by Luce Bergman and Dykeland: Volume 1 by Sarah-Joy Ford, will run until Sunday 21st September 2025.
Blurring the line between domesticity and ritual, Luce Bergman’s Apologues brings together hand-crafted artefacts and everyday objects in sculptural installations that probe gendered traditions and shared human frailties. Using 3D illustration, visual puns and intimate materials, Bergman weaves personal story, museum collections, and social history into poetic fragments of narrative and meaning.
An artist deeply engaged in arts-based research, Bergman’s work spans moving image, music, performance, design, and book art. Apologues at The Whitaker invites viewers into a world where humour, vulnerability and critique converge—challenging what is common, and what is sacred.
Artist, Luce Bergman, said: “”The Whitaker staff are caretakers of the odd and wondrous things, the wonky and precious stuff of life. This place never ceases to offer up visual poetry and it’s been invaluable to my practice to be invited into the story for a little while and offered such trust. Tell my next of kin, when I pop my clogs I want to be mummified and left to the Whitaker collection please.”
Artist and independent scholar Sarah-Joy Ford presents Dykeland: Volume 1—a vibrant and radical archival exhibition exploring the history of dyke and women’s lands in the UK. Through quilting, embroidery, tufting, text and assemblage, Ford stitches together memory, fantasy and ecological activism to honour the politics, resistance and joy of queer communities and the women who came before.
The exhibition features a new body of work made in dialogue with Dykeland and Other Secret Islands, a forthcoming poetry collection by Jane Campbell. The result is an intergenerational archive of dyke visual culture—an act of resistance, celebration, and care in an increasingly hostile social climate.
Both exhibitions are rooted in dialogue—between past and present, between artist and archive, between people and place. Apologues and Dykeland invite the local community to reflect on identity, relationships, history and care, while celebrating creativity in its most intimate and political forms.
Artist, Sarah-Joy Ford, said: “This exhibition is a love letter written in stitch to dyke place making practices and poetry. I am so deeply grateful to Jane Campbell for sharing her poetry, memories, hospitality, solidarity and friendship with me, it is from this well of generosity that these new artworks have sprung. I hope Dykeland might be a place to find some threads of hope, in these dark times for the LGBTQ+ family.”
Creative Director, Gaynor Seville, said: “I am delighted to be presenting these two fantastic exhibitions from these really talented and ambitious artists. We are proud at The Whitaker to support artists at all stages of their careers and to show innovative, challenging artwork. We know our visitors look forward to seeing what will come next, and these exhibitions will not disappoint!”
Join us at The Whitaker for the preview on Saturday 7th June at 2pm, and immerse yourself in these remarkable new exhibitions. Admission is free, and all are welcome.
For more information, head to: www.thewhitaker.org
