28 June to 20 September 2025
This Is All the Treasure We Can Have or Hold is a new solo show by acclaimed London-based artist Ruth Calland. The exhibition explores important contemporary themes around self-transformation, and the elusive but joyful reward of authentic self-expression.
Calland celebrates the lives of trans and nonbinary people who they admire, in the ‘Pin-Ups’ series of vibrant oil paintings, with natural settings that emphasise the importance of embracing our true nature. They have also created two new short films that explore the alchemy of gender and its fluctuations.
Other paintings explore the transgressive as expressed in early vampire films, depicting those in the process of transforming, in various states of rapture and/or anxiety. This exhibition invites us to consider the creative power of human possibility beyond binaries.
About Ruth Calland
Born in Scunthorpe, Calland sees this exhibition as a homecoming: a turning towards their roots within the backdrop of the alchemical steel town landscape. Industry is in the blood – the family cycle manufacturers was founded in nearby Home Street before the church was built. And gender nonconformity runs in the family: Calland’s great-grandmother caused both scandal and inspiration, by being the first woman in Scunthorpe to ride a bike like a man, rather than side-saddle.
Calland has won many awards and accolades: They have been a finalist in the 2024 Exeter Phoenix Open, the 2023 Barbican Arts Group Open, the ICA New Contemporaries and the Marmite Prize for Painting, a Boise Scholar and a prize-winner of the CGP London Annual Open.
Events
Exhibition Launch Event Saturday 28 June 2025 1pm to 3pm
Join us in the gallery to celebrate the opening of This Is All the Treasure We Can Have or Hold. Refreshments and light snacks will be served. Free Entry. Everyone welcome.
Publication Launch Saturday 23 August 2025 12-2pm
Coinciding with Scunthorpe Pride, Ruth Calland will be at the gallery between midday and 2pm launching a new publication accompanying This Is All the Treasure We Can Have or Hold. Refreshments and light snacks will be served. Free Entry. Everyone welcome.
The exhibition will tour to Hastings Museum and Art Gallery in 2026.
Images:
Look After Your Trans Friends at the Beach (detail) (2024) by Ruth Calland
Self-Sacrifice Scene (detail) (2023) by Ruth Calland
Jeffrey Dancing Outside (2023) by Ruth Calland
