Ways of Perceiving
28 April - 25 May 2026 · London
FEATURED ARTISTS: Becca Ellis, Fatemeh Heidarhosseini, Laetitzia Campbell, Lícia Santos, Haoua Habre
A homage to John Berger’s Ways of Seeing, this exhibition is a meditation on slow looking and the mechanisms of human perception. Produced during Hands-on’s residency programme – now in its 3rd edition – it features the works of Laetitzia Campbell, Becca Ellis, Haoua Habré, Fatemeh Heidarhosseini, and Lícia Santos, encompassing painting, installation, and embroidery.
Like the opening lines of Berger’s seminal text – ‘Seeing comes before words’ – perception provides a rational framework for us to view the world and our experiences within it. Filtered through the rose-tinted glasses of our upbringing, accumulated knowledge, and society’s nurtured biases, it rarely offers a truthful account of events. Instead, we are left with an aesthetic experience that is personal and nuanced, where meaning is derived from our own creative thoughts, emotions, and associations. Yet, at times, the collective observations of a community can bring that experience in line with relational art.
In this exhibition, perception is understood as a multifaceted experience, one that can trigger questions and inquiry, or protect us from the harsh truths of human existence. In doing so, we are all invited to embark on an introspective journey through sites of memory, cultural phenomena, and relational aesthetics.
Look. Breathe. Look again.
To be continued by the perceiver…
Text by Nigel Ip
BIOGRAPHIES
Becca Ellis is a Bristol-based oil painter whose work centres on the idea of the “vessel” as a way to explore the human condition through paint. A 2023 Camberwell College of Arts graduate, she combines research into natural and philosophical phenomena with an intuitive, gestural approach. Her diffused brushwork traces ephemeral spaces, engaging with the tension between material and immaterial experience. Her work has been exhibited across London and Bristol, including at Southwark Park Galleries and Bermondsey Project Space.
Haoua Habré is a multidisciplinary artist of Chadian and French origin whose practice is shaped by experiences of displacement, movement, and transformation. Working across photography, painting, and writing, she explores the body as a territory carrying lived and social memory, using fragmented forms and gestures of erasure. Her practice examines visibility, intimacy, and identity through the idea of the body as an archive. Her work has been exhibited internationally, including in New York, London, Amsterdam, and Paris.
Laetitzia Campbell is a British-French artist of Jamaican heritage based in London whose practice centres on textiles, using thread as a form of drawing to create fluid compositions between figuration and abstraction. With a background in luxury embroidery, she combines technical precision with an intuitive and exploratory approach. Her work explores “second-hand memories” and how emotions are inherited and transformed through objects, stories, and gestures. Her work has been exhibited at London Art Fair, Paul Smith, and with Ed Cross Fine Arts.
Fatemeh Heidarhosseini is an Iranian painter based in London whose work explores memory, displacement, and the shifting experience of home. A 2025 Royal College of Art graduate, her practice draws on her upbringing in Tehran and her experience of relocating to the UK. Working primarily with oil on linen, canvas, and wood, she creates layered landscapes that move between abstraction and material presence, evoking states of unease, grief, and memory. Her work has been exhibited in London, including at Apsara Studio.
Lícia Santos is an Angolan artist based between Lisbon and London whose practice centres on painting as a space for material and emotional inquiry. A 2022 Slade School of Fine Art graduate, she works with oil paint, sand, earth pigments, and drawing to explore the relationship between the human body and landscape. Drawing on the desert as both a physical and poetic reference, her work considers memory, identity, presence, absence, and the passage of time. She has received the Euan Uglow Memorial Scholarship and is preparing her first solo exhibition in Luanda.
