Art in the Age of Now at Fulham Town Hall
LUAP transforms a forgotten jail cell into a space for colour, memory and post-lockdown reflection
Fulham Town Hall is about to reopen for the first time in more than a decade. The building—51,000 square feet of disused Victorian grandeur—has stood silent through years of development delays and, most recently, a global pandemic. Now, just weeks after England lifts its final lockdown restrictions, the doors open once again for Art in the Age of Now.
Curated by Ben Moore (Art Below) and co-presented by Lamington Group, the exhibition brings together over 150 artists in a free public show that reclaims the building before it is redeveloped into a boutique hotel and creative hub. Installations, performances, paintings, sculptures and film take over every corner—courtrooms, vaults, stairwells, offices, and cells. The show feels like a reawakening: a return to shared space after a long period of distance, silence and separation.
My contribution is installed in one of the basement rooms—a former jail cell, low and windowless, layered with soot and time. When I first enter the space, I find everything covered in a thick layer of black dust. It isn’t just dirt; it’s carbon, built up over a decade from London’s traffic drifting through the tiny vents. It’s a residue of stillness—a physical reminder of what happens when a place sits untouched.
I clear the room and repaint it entirely, using recycled emulsion mixed into a vivid pink. With a spray gun, I coat every surface: floor, walls, ceiling, vents, cables, switches. The colour is total. It turns the cell into something else—less a place of confinement, more a container for potential.
At the centre, the Pink Bear sits on a vintage pink bicycle, with a bucket of paint balanced on the rear rack. A painting, Freedom, hangs nearby, showing a girl and the Pink Bear each standing with their bikes. The bicycle becomes a symbol of movement, joy and self-powered freedom—something many of us have longed for throughout the isolation of lockdown. It represents a return to mobility, to energy, to shared streets and open space. No emissions. No barriers. Just motion and colour.
This work isn’t about escape. It’s about rewriting a room’s purpose. It’s about shifting how we occupy space—and how we carry memory forward.
When the exhibition opens, the building will be full again: of people, sound, ideas. Other artists in the show include:
Ben Moore, Joe Rush, Charlotte Colbert, Patrick Boyd, Ariadne Dane, Tim Gatenby, Eliot Haigh, Liam Hayhow, Ru Knox, Anna Kenneally, Thomas Lumley, Peter Mammes, Chris Moon, Jeff Robb, Ernesto Romano, Conrad Shawcross, James Vaulkhard, MC Llamas Curates, Art Wars, Stations of the Cross, One Small Step, Skip Gallery, Christabel Milbanke, Hoxton Gallery, Sam Haggerty, Angry Dan, Don, Ben Eine, Kucy Flynn, FORCE, Paul Insect, Jack Laver, Dot Masters, Gary Mansefield, NERONE, REZ, SPORE, UNVRSL NMD, Matt Web, Mr Doodle, Nettie Wakefield, Kiera Bennett, Nancy Fouts, and LUAP.
Art in the Age of Now doesn’t just show new work. It reanimates a civic space and captures the feeling of a city regathering itself. My part in it is one small room, once a place of isolation, now filled with pink, perspective, and possibility.