124 Studios: New Ground
Six artists. One collective. A new chapter.
124 Studios is an arts collective brought together by a shared commitment to creativity, collaboration and community. New Ground presents new work in painting, glass, collage and multimedia, celebrating the diversity of contemporary practice through six distinct artistic voices, united by the collective spirit that has defined 124 Studios for more than a decade.
The exhibition opens at Norden Farm Centre for the Arts on Thursday 10 September and features work by Julie Bennett, Kirsty Brooks, Janie Davies, Kirsten Dhanda, Inge du Plessis and Terri Jones, showcasing a rich variety of visual languages and subject matter.
New Ground marks an important new chapter for 124 Studios following the collective’s departure from its long-term home in Maidenhead’s Nicholsons Centre earlier this year. While the artists are currently without a permanent shared studio, the exhibition demonstrates that the collective’s creative energy and collaborative ethos continue to thrive, finding new ways to connect with audiences across the region.
Visitors are invited to experience the exhibition throughout its six-week run and attend a programme of accompanying events, including artists in conversation, arts & culture networking evening and a closing celebration.
Exhibition Dates: Thur 10 Sept - Fri 16 Oct 2026
Opening Hours: Tues-Sat, 5-10pm (Closed Sun and Mon)
Events
Thur 10 Sept 6pm - 9pm Private View
Sat 19 Sept 7pm - 8.30pm Artists in Conversation
Tues 22 Sept 5pm - 8pm Arts & Culture Networking Evening
Thurs 15 Oct 6pm - 9pm Closing Party
Artists’ Statements
Julie Bennett explores identity, emotion and the quiet power of the averted gaze. Her portraits invite viewers into spaces of contemplation rather than direct connection. Working in expressive oil paint, Bennett creates paintings that move beyond likeness to explore reflection, vulnerability and human presence, while increasingly considering how atmosphere and place shape emotional experience.
Kirsty Brooks creates site-specific public artworks that relate to history, industry, and a sense of place. Her personal work explores texture, layering and material qualities. Working with collage, glass and printmaking, this body of work combines repurposed and discarded objects and images to create layered composites which echo the surprising beauty of the everyday.
Janie Davies' practice centres around the liminal space of where past meets present. It is primarily site-based. Exploring and documenting each project’s psychogeographical journey through multimedia, responses to the environment, the written word, and the collection of
objects. Areas of interest are social narratives in the home and the body’s relationship with nature in woodland settings.
Kirsten Dhanda explores atmosphere, memory and the feeling of being inside a landscape. Through layered paint, gestural mark-making and mixed media, her work sits between abstraction and representation, suggesting paths, horizons and shifting light.
Inge du Plessis’ work is best described as narrative portraiture, with figures that act more as characters within a story than as direct likenesses of the model. Working in oils and a rich, intense palette, she explores broad, recurring themes, most recently, the complex connection between humanity and nature in a series of works titled Harvesters.
Terri Jones creates fine art portraits of people, animals and places, murals, and unique artworks for homes and businesses. Her paintings are joyful and colourful, full of life. Exploring the use of
background and props to reveal the character and personality of the subject. A person in their space, an animal in their favourite habitat or a building in its grounds.