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Rituals II

cam.contemporary & Studio/Chapple

Barbara Majek, Ellathea Jackson-Harris, LaNia Sproles, Nicola Frimpong, Noel Mercado, Renoir Saulter, Roland Knowlden Jr., zakkiyyah najeebah dumas-o’neal

June 18 — July 25, 2026

A ritual dates back to the earliest of civilisations and indigenous cultures as a way to forge deep connections between humanity and the spiritual and natural world, whether that be through the form of meditation, chanting, dancing, or observing seasonal or astrological cycles, most of which are often ascribed to a set of actions or order as it relates to religion or spirituality. In other forms, ritual can represent the habitual nature of a particular action or repeated activity or gesture. For many artists, artmaking itself, or the preparation leading up to the making, can be ritualistic, so can the choice in subject matter, the way of collecting or manipulating the material, or a process of archiving. For a gallery, it can be a recurring exhibition.

RITUALS is a yearly collaborative exhibition between Studio/Chapple and an international gallery. This year's iteration features an artistic exchange with eight artists between Chicago and London, in collaboration with Chicago gallery, cam.contemporarie. The interpretation of ‘ritual’ is intentionally left ambiguous to allow the participating artists the opportunity to explore what the concept means to them in terms of their practice and the work presented, which invites a diverse range of practices to unearth the hidden rituals of everyday life as they emerge transnationally across both geographical landscapes. Ritual is manifested in the way that Barbara Majek uses Yoruba mythologies and cosmological systems to ground her practice through her swirling abstract figurative representations of healing, memory work, and representations of spiritual circularity. For Ellathea Jackson-Harris, it can represent the ritual between voyeur and voyee, by distorting the simple act of looking and receiving, as seen through the collection of architectural glass blocks that blur the access to the body and the image. Both LaNia Sproles and Nicola Frimpong’s practice are quite the opposite of figurative concealment, but represent an overt exposure of the internal conversation between the mental and physical state of being through their illustrations of individuals in precarious conditions and situations.

Noel Mercado’s use of discarded and repurposed punching bags to create methodical patchwork textile works like ‘Low Hanging Fruit Doesn't Taste As Sweet’, are his way of creating a visceral reminder of the discipline of self-improvement. Roland Knowlden Jr’s use of poetics to inform his paintings and sculptural works, are a ritual collaboration between the written word and the collection of found materials, outlining the ignition of a recollected encounter personified through the careful placement of three matchsticks. zakkiyyah najeebah dumas-o’neal is also interrogating a poetic visual language, in her photographic notations derived from her archival practice of collecting found images of light, solar phenomena, and family alongside her own photographs. Renoir Saulter’s balcony series is archival and tribunal in the ways that his mixed media balcony-like steel structures honour the urban industrial landscape of London and its Grime musical roots - channeling the dance between sonic structures of place.

As you move between the works in ‘RITUALS II’, conversations, similarities and discord emerge across both localities. A lineage of shared sonic histories between Chicago and London is well documented, and this exhibition begins to unearth this relationship through material and aesthetic synergy. Found materials and forgotten debris make their way into the gallery from both cities, with an understanding that these often invisible objects are a living archive of our collective experience. Old mobile phones, unused matches, discarded punching bags and glass tiles gather here to tell the story alongside brush and camera. ‘RITUALS II’ proposes a transnational dialogue between artists who, individually and collectively, challenge ideas of what it means to belong, to persist, and to live through these ceremonies of the everyday.