Exhibitions

The Winchester Gallery’s largest space at Winchester School of Art hosts a wide range of contemporary art from around the world, curated in dialogue with the interests of the art school.

In addition to this primary gallery space in West Side, we also create exhibitions and programming elsewhere, both on and off the WSA campus. In recent years, the West Side Foyer, Case Studies (East Side), the WSA Array (West Side Lecture Theatre), and the Rotunda have all been experimental venues for students, staff, and visiting artists. Beyond WSA, we support curatorial projects devised by students and staff in venues across the UK and around the world.

A gallery display shows a stack of vintage computers and monitors arranged in a sculptural installation, with keyboards, cables and small objects placed around the base. The mix of older desktop machines and accessories creates a layered composition against a plain white wall.

Changing the Game

4 to 27 June 2026 | Main gallery

Winchester School of Art (WSA) will celebrate a decade of games, play, and creative experimentation this June with Changing the Game: Ten Years of Play at WSA, a major alumni-focused exhibition and programme hosted at The Winchester Gallery.

A collage combines a line‑drawing of a person labelled “IDEA” with a schematic diagram of hands operating a device, overlaid on a tinted photograph of someone using a headset. Vertical colour bands in grey, peach and orange divide the composition.

Intrusive Images

12 to 30 May 2026 | WSA Array and across WSA and Avenue campuses

Our first campus-wide screening event. ‘Intrusive images’ explored the theme of access, through creative practice, to technology and physical and institutional space.

A beige graphic features an irregular, hand‑drawn white outline resembling a loose map or pathway shape. The line curves and angles across the centre of the image on a plain background.

Whispers

7 to 17 May 2026 | Locations across Winchester

A public art trail that connected the existing campus of Winchester School of Art (WSA) and Winchester Gallery with Capital House, a former civic building currently being transformed into a Centre for Creative Technologies.

A framed textile print in vivid pink and orange abstract patterns hangs beside a mannequin wearing a matching patterned garment. The display highlights the connection between the printed artwork and the finished clothing design.

Bernat Klein: Influence and Inspiration

16 April to 23 May | Main gallery

In partnership with the Bernat Klein Foundation and Creative Scotland, this exhibition takes a comprehensive look at his career and working methods.

A close-up view of many folded paper forms arranged in a grid-like pattern on the floor. The papers create repeating geometric shapes with visible text on each fold.

Folding Space

30 January to 28 March 2026 | Main gallery

An exhibition of contemporary book artworks and artists’ books made in the UK and Japan, part of a collaboration with Urawa Art Museaum in Saitama, Japan, and the University of the West of England. Curated by Noriko Suzuki-Bosco,

Never Say Never Again

7 November 2025 to 10 January 2026 | Main gallery

A landmark celebration of a quarter-century of art and craft from the early programme of The Winchester Gallery — revisited, reviewed, and re-made — featuring work by artists who showed at the Gallery from 1985 onwards.

The image shows a contemporary gallery space with white walls displaying several colorful abstract paintings in various sizes. A dark purple bench is positioned in the foreground, and the room is well-lit with ceiling spotlights.

WSA Painting Prize 2025

22 September to 18 October 2025 | Main gallery

The WSA Painting Prize celebrates outstanding painting practice at undergraduate level, culminating in an annual exhibition at the Winchester Gallery, University of Southampton in the Autumn of each year.

An art installation features numerous colorful spherical objects suspended from the ceiling by thin strings. The spheres vary in size and design, creating a vibrant floating display in a spacious gallery.

Small Worlds

11 July to 16 August 2025 | Main gallery

The gallery was taken over by hundreds of handmade ‘small worlds’ that celebrate and explore our connections to nature, people and planet.

An art gallery corner with black-covered tables displaying prints and small sculptures, and a large figurative painting on an easel near a window.

Degree Show Shop

5 June to 11 June 2025 | Main gallery

The gallery was turned into a shop showcasing graduates’ work from across the disciplines. A chance for public to buy new work from emerging artists.

A gallery wall displays multiple artworks, including paintings of people around a table, framed illustrations, and a monitor with headphones attached. The arrangement combines vibrant colors and mixed media pieces.

Work & Play

28 March to 24 May 2025 | Main gallery

30 artists, including works on loan from Southampton City Art Gallery, exploring the theme of Work & Play.

Blue light washes across a glass façade with metal framing, highlighting the geometric lines of the structure. The interior ceiling and beams are faintly visible through the tinted windows.

DRoP

13 March 2025 | The Rotunda

An evening of experimental A/V installation and sound art interwoven with a soundtrack of downtempo electronica, trip-hop, dub-disco, Balearic beats and much more.

A person walks barefoot on a sandy beach with footprints visible in the foreground, set against a vivid, surreal color palette of pink sand and orange sky. Buildings and a cloudy horizon appear in the background.

Queering Connections – Glitchy Kinship

31 January to 15 March 2025 | Main gallery

Based on an ongoing collaboration between sociologist Lizzie Reed and visual artist Milou Stella, Glitchy Kinship asked what happens when connections are interrupted, changed, distorted, and reconstructed.

Two people stand indoors holding large bouquets of flowers wrapped in paper, near a staircase and a wall with artwork. The setting appears to be a gallery or event space.

Collecting Sue Clowes

15 November 2024 to 18 January 2025 | Main gallery

An 80s fashion exhibition featuring leading designer Sue Clowes who created clothing for 80s pop icons such as Boy George and Culture Club. Southampton based collector

A large gallery space with yellow paintings on the left wall and groups of people gathered around tables and artworks throughout the room.

WSA Painting Prize 2024

23 September to 2 November 2024 | Main gallery

The WSA Painting Prize has been developed to support artists at an early stage in their practice and celebrates outstanding painting practice at undergraduate level. It is an international initiative with young Greek artists in collaboration with their contemporaries in the UK.

A green wall displays numerous hand-drawn bicycle illustrations arranged in a grid, with the text “Draw your own bike & add it to our wall!”.

How to draw a bicycle

July 10 to August 3 2024 | Main gallery

This participatory exhibition, produced in collaboration with Cycle Winchester, brought artists into the gallery to offer hands-on opportunities for visitors to contribute to the exhibition.

A wall installation features several colorful, textured fabric pieces connected by braided strands, arranged in an organic pattern.

Second Breakfast

12 to 19 June 2024 | Main gallery

This was an exhibition of work by WSA Fine Art Alumni, which was shown in The Winchester Gallery to coincide with the 2024 Degree Show.

A distorted 3D-rendered scene shows a cluttered office corner with shelves full of books, binders, and boxes, along with a desk holding a computer and chair. Additional details include a skull model, a small orange cat figure, and various papers scattered throughout the space.

Spatial Media, Inhibitions and Relocations

16 to 26 May 2024 | Main gallery

This exhibition asked to what extent new forms of technology and media rearticulate the meaning and the political stakes of the ideas of ‘space’ in the era of geopolitical unrest, increased precarity and climate catastrophe.

Building Financial Resilience for Later Life

25 April 2024 | Main gallery

A visual arts exhibition dedicated to exploring the intersections between ethnicity, financial security, and pension protection.

A gallery room features three framed abstract artworks with intricate patterns on one wall and a single striped artwork on a teal-colored wall.

Moving Colour

7 March to 13 April 2024 | Main gallery

A multi-disciplinary group exhibition exploring phenomenological qualities in formal aspects of colour.

An art gallery display features a folded paper structure marked with blue arrows and a red 'X' inside a glass case. Behind it, a wall is covered with small photographs arranged in a grid, and another table with items is visible to the right.

Queering Connections – Triangulation

30 January to 25 February 2024 | Main gallery

Katherine Anteney, Sally Schuh, and Louise Siddons came together for a queer experiment in co-creative, collaborative cartography, curated in conversation with the WSA artists’ book collection.

A gallery display features large posters on white walls showcasing app interface designs and informational graphics, primarily in purple and blue tones. In the center, a mannequin dressed in a yellow crop top and black leggings stands on a metal stand.

Design for Future

17 to 20 January 2024 | Main gallery

This exhibition explored newly designed product and service concepts that could improve people’s quality of life from diverse perspectives.

A contemporary gallery installation features abstract sculptural pieces made of textured materials arranged on a colorful floral-patterned rug. The background includes large windows and a wall mural with soft pastel shapes and a cartoon-like face.

Palimpfest

7 to 14 December 2023 | Main gallery

The show was installed at various stages to represent an ongoing dialogue with process (a way of working which underscore the Fine Art Programme). Like a palimpsest the show could be viewed at these different stages of formation.

A white wall display features two gathered fabric garments, a sheet of text, and several small objects arranged on a narrow shelf, including folded paper pieces and miniature items. Labels with descriptions are mounted alongside the garments and objects.

Ordinary Things

2 to 25 November 2023 | Main gallery

In ‘Ordinary Things’, twenty-six artists at WSA transformed everyday objects into complex meditations on what it means to be in the world.

An art gallery with white walls displays three artworks: an abstract gray and colorful piece on the left, a vibrant purple and green painting in the center, and a black rectangular piece with the word “BURNING” in yellow on the right. The floor is gray, and the ceiling has track lighting illuminating the artworks.

WSA Painting Prize 2023

28 September to 20 October 2023 | Main gallery

For its inaugural year, the WSA Painting Prize Award Exhibition 2023 invited innovative work by women artists with the intention of creating opportunities for young female Greek artists in collaboration with their contemporaries in the UK.

twg@soton.ac.uk

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Photographs credits: Dave Gibbons and Xinyue Li. Email us for specific credits and captions for external use.