Previous displays
Altitude I 01.12.25 - 22.03.26 Private View Friday
Artists include: David Abbott, Sarah Grant, Tim Patrick, Jo Berry, Adam Rawlison, Lewis Graham, Claire Dorsett ‘When Altitude becomes form’
Altitude is an exhibition conceived as a multi-year, perhaps even decade-long, project, bringing together landscape paintings recorded with a title addition, according to their height above sea level. Each work registers a specific altitude, using metres as both a factual or estimated measurement and a conceptual anchor. Through this cumulative approach, Altitude proposes landscape not as a fixed genre, but as an ongoing act of observation shaped by geography, data, and lived experience.
The exhibition is informed by, and is a homage to, the work of Carol Rhodes (1959–2018), whose paintings depict landscapes from elevated, often aerial viewpoints. Rhodes’ work is characterised by a cool, analytical distance: industrial sites, quarries, road systems, and agricultural land are rendered with flattened perspective, sharp edges, and muted colour. Her landscapes appear simultaneously abstract and documentary, evoking Shan Shui (Chinese) and Sansuiga (Japanese) traditional landscapes, art forms featuring elevated, often "bird's-eye" viewpoints and flattened perspectives.. By removing the human figure and adopting a hovering vantage point, Rhodes transforms terrain into a system, measured, surveyed, and shaped by economic and infrastructural forces.
Altitude also draws on the legacy of the New Deal photographers and the later exhibition New Topographics: Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape (1975). Like these photographic traditions, the project adopts a restrained, descriptive approach to landscape, resisting romanticism in favour of clarity, repetition, and structure. Measurement, whether through altitude, framing, or seriality, becomes a way to acknowledge how contemporary landscapes are constructed, occupied, and continually redefined. In this sense, Altitude positions painting as a parallel form of topographic record: slow, deliberate, and attuned to the subtle shifts between place, representation, and time.
In this context, Altitude serves as a platform for artists selected for their ethical engagement with landscape, where political discourse is treated as inseparable from material-led practice. The series prioritises artists whose work acknowledges landscape as contested ground, shaped by histories of extraction, ownership, access, and labour, while remaining attentive to the physical acts of painting: surface, scale, pigment, and process. Selection is guided not by style but by commitment: to sustained looking, to the consequences of representation, and to the social and environmental conditions embedded within place. By holding political awareness alongside the slow, material logic of painting, Altitude resists both spectacle and nostalgia, instead presenting landscape as a site where aesthetic decisions are always entangled with ethical position.
POST-card Art Exhibition & Auction 01.12.25 - 22.03.26
POST-card Art Artists include: Daniel Pryde-Jarman, Hilary Jack, Lewis Graham, Charlie Hurcombe, Myrna Quiñonez, Karen David, Matt Westbrook, Christo and Jean Claude, (private collection) Lucy Lippard (private collection) Scott Robertson (private collection)
Postcard Art and Auction An exhibition and auction of postcards produced by students, staff and artists to raise money for their chosen charity Maggs Day Centre and the student ast materials in the run up to their Final Degree Show in May 2026
Artists include: Amy Carter, Lizzy Collins , Pippa Curley , Fern Dunne, Katie Fidler, Ashley Gregory , Kai Hewitt , Scarlett Hoadley , Tessa Hudson , Nelly Ledger , Amelia Lewis, Sophia Macedo, Charlotte Nuttall, Kate Phillips , Kacey Reading, Lucy Rose, Leonie Rossiter , Leah Rush, Sarah Shilcof , Keira Thornton, Maddison Dilloway , Carlotta Capocci , Amelia Johnson , Charlie Knight , Charlotte Lilly , Lucy Meaden , Lewis Fidler, Joanne Henderson, Dan Roach,Nat Pitt, Lewis Graham, Charlie Hurcombe, Myrna Quiñonez, Luke Routledge, Meg Golding, Andee Collard, Matt Westbrook.
The event, developed in partnership with Noble & Common Gallery, aims to support the students’ End of Year Degree Show while celebrating creativity and collaboration across the university’s art community. The Postcard Exhibition & Auction will feature dozens of unique A6 artworks, each created by a student, staff member, or guest artist. Every piece will be sold anonymously, artists’ names revealed only after purchase, encouraging buyers to choose based on creativity and instinct rather than reputation. The event will showcase a wide range of disciplines, including painting, drawing, printmaking, collage, and photography. Working with Noble & Common Gallery offers valuable insights into the contemporary art world and provides practical experience for their CVs and future careers.
Hops vs. Art 24.09.25 - 10.11.25
Artists: Angelina May Davis, Elisha Enfield, Lewis Graham, Chris Shaw Hughes, Isaac Jordan, Ispahani Mukah, John Timberlake. Supported by
Company Drinks
The Hop Market in Worcester, where our gallery now stands, was historically a site of lively commerce, where farmers, traders, and brewers met to exchange one of the region’s most valuable crops. This exhibition draws a parallel between that history and the contemporary art market, asking: what kinds of value are exchanged in both?
At first glance, the hop market and the art market might seem unrelated, one rooted in agriculture, the other in culture and commerce. But look closer, and shared qualities begin to emerge. Both are spaces of negotiation and trust. In the hop market, value was determined through handshakes and expert knowledge; in the art world, worth is just as fluid, debated, perceived, and deeply personal. Both markets honour unseen labour. Hops are cultivated, harvested, and dried through seasonal cycles of care, while artworks are researched, wrestled with, and revised, often over months or years. What appears for sale is only the surface of a much longer process.
These markets are also inherently social. Where farmers, brewers, and traders once gathered to talk and trade, artists, collectors, and audiences now meet in conversation and exchange. Both reflect something deeper about local identity. Hops once defined Worcester’s economy and its outward-facing character; today, art continues to explore and challenge how we see this place, and ourselves within it.
And perhaps most fundamentally, both markets are about transformation. Hops become beer. Ideas become artworks. Materials are turned into meaning. In each case, value, in all its forms, is brewed or painted, drawn, shaped, and shared.
At Noble and Common, we open our doors with this inaugural exhibition, Hops (Market) Vs. Art (Market ) a celebration of shared histories, marketplaces, and cultural exchange.