States of Assemblage

Open Call: ‘States of Assemblage’

Exhibition concept: 

‘States of Assemblage’ is an open call exhibition taking place in December 2025 at Unit 2, St Leonards-on-Sea, UK. Curated by Laurence Tidy, the show will offer a current view of assemblage art and assemblagist artist practices in and around Sussex. Its aims are to celebrate, contemplate, and consider contemporary assemblage art and assemblagist methodologies. 

It will do so with a local lens, focussing on artists within East and West Sussex. Artists around the borders of Sussex and artists with current or previous connections to Sussex who are not necessarily currently residing here are also welcome to enter. The focus on the place of making is intended to raise the question of how assemblagist artist practices relate to site and context. 

The exhibition also aims to bring together assemblage art and assemblagist artist practices to create a temporary community of potentially like-minded artists. In the opinion of its curator, ‘assemblage’ can be taken to mean many things; as a term, it is generally less well-known than associated terms such as collage and it is able to include a vast array of art and artist practices, three- and two-dimensional work, styles and intentions. It is hoped that an open-call format will allow for a diversity of approaches to shape the exhibition’s content.

The timing of the show looks towards the weeks leading up to 2026 – a year which marks 65 years since The Art of Assemblage at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Seen by many writers, curators, and gallerists as pioneering in popularising the term assemblage, this exhibition looks back to 1961 and considers changes and consistencies since then by examining our current ‘States of Assemblage’.