Archival Loops

Archival Loops opens at Art Space on Friday 23 October, as part of Photo Fringe 2026. It's a group show that brings together lens-based artists selected through an open call, each working with archives as their starting point. The archives they draw on are as varied as the artists themselves: personal, family, community, cultural, institutional and found. The exhibition is part of the festival's ongoing partnership with Pompey Darkroom, which extends the programme along the south coast to Portsmouth.

The work looks at how photographs, documents and found objects carry personal and collective histories when they're taken out of their original context, and how their meaning shifts over time. The title refers to this year's Photo Fringe theme, the archival loop: the idea that an image that once seemed familiar can become strange, and a settled story can be reopened. It also asks who creates an archive, what gets kept and what's left behind.

Eleven artists are showing together: Karl Bailey, Billie Rae Cawte, Patti Gaal-Holmes, Eddie Stenstrom, Laurene Bois-Mariage, Liv Harris, Mia Blake, Monica Dhaka, Sebastián Rodriguez De Castro, Evagelia Hagikalfa and Eva Voutsaki. Each one approaches the archive from their own angle, so the show gathers a range of ways of working with old material rather than a single, uniform style.

There's a private view on Friday 23 October from 18:00 to 20:00, and the exhibition stays on display through Saturday 24 and Sunday 25 October, from 10:00 to 16:00. Entry is free. You'll find it at Art Space, 27 Brougham Rd, Southsea, PO5 4PA.