Project Native Informant

A message from Project Native Informant:

31 October 2025

Dear friends,

We hope this email finds you safe and well wherever you are.

We are writing to let you know after twelve years, Project Native Informant is closing.

The decision to wind down did not come lightly. The current global economic, political and social environment has shaped into an extremely volatile and unsustainable environment for a gallery such as ours. Moreover personal factors contributed to this decision.

We are deeply proud of the entirety of our work, and hope our presence was felt. We wish to first and foremost thank the program’s artists, who each presented such rigorous, enlightening exhibitions. Each and every project is inedibly engrained in our memory. And thank you to all our collaborators who supported our work. And finally to PNI team past and present, who each and every day made coming into the gallery such a pleasure.

Beyond this is still to be dreamed.

With much love and solidarity,

Stephan

During Frieze Art Fair 2025 week, Sophia Al-Maria will be involved in two major projects.

Winner of the 2025 Frieze London Artist Award, Al-Maria will debut Wall-Based Work, a drop-down comedy club’ that will see the artist perform daily live stand-up sets throughout the duration of Frieze London. The ‘drop-down’ refers to a projected brick-wall backdrop which will descend during her performances. Comedy clubs are notoriously unglamorous in their appointments, but this blank brick wall has other meanings. It is unfinished, lacking a surface or decoration. It suggests a firing squad, alluding to the implied challenge to the comic from their audience to be funny or they will ‘die’ on stage. Above all, it is the antithesis of what you expect at an international art fair. It’s not even an actual wall.

Comedians talk about their ‘material’; Al-Maria’s piece suggests that an artist’s material can have a similarly evanescent quality: it exists, but it has no meaning or reality until it is presented to an audience. The ‘commons’ is that dimension of sharing, but that sharing can be antagonistic, adversarial, even.

‘It’s the last honest art form,’ says Al-Maria. ‘Stand-up requires presence.’ As AI looms over the notion of individual creativity, the panic-inducing bareness of the comedy-club stage is a last bastion of authenticity. Al-Maria may be performing on her own, but the experience is a collective one, tapping into shared fears of exposure, vulnerability and creative openness.

Al-Maria will also participate in the group
exhibition Paradigm Shift presented by 180 Studios. Opening Wednesday 15 October 2025, Paradigm Shift will transform 180 Strand’s vast subterranean spaces with a landmark exhibition spanning the most acclaimed moving image works from the 1970s to today, drawing on avant-garde cinema, television, music video, performance, fashion, gaming, and internet culture.

Image 1:
Sophia Al-Maria. Photo by Vasso Vu

Image 2:
Sophia Al-Maria
Tiger Strike Red, 2022
Single-channel HD video
23 mins 03 secs
Edition of 3 and 2 AP

Juliana Huxtable participates in the group exhibition Dance of Resistance @ Center for Visual Art, Denver August 15 – October 25, 2025.

Dance of Resistance features artists who voice the stories of their communities through figural works of art, exploring histories and offering pathways to healing and empowerment. Each artist has an artistic practice rooted in their LGBTQ+ identity. Approaching their work from unique viewpoints, they employ varied media to present themes from lived experience and imagined futures. The artists unite in using their art as a means of activism, visually conveying issues important to themselves and their communities. They amplify silenced voices, expose myths, and promote a dialogue that invites reflection on the human experience, illuminating the power of art to inspire change and foster understanding in our diverse world. These works primarily include figural depictions, placing a q***r bodily presence firmly in the spotlight.




Image:
Juliana Huxtable
IGUANA GLAM, 2024
Triptych acrylic on printed canvas and plastic button
Each: 153 x 114 x 4.5 cm
60 1/4 x 44 7/8 x 1 3/4 in
Total: 153 x 360 x 4.5 cm
60 1/4 x 141 3/4 x 1 3/4 in

Flo Brooks and Juliana Huxtable participate in the group exhibition Voyager 2000: Worldbeing & Wonder? @ First Site, Colchester 19 July - Sunday 05 October 2025.

Voyager 2000: Worldbeing & Wonder invites you on a sensory, emotional, and digital journey through art, technology, and the world we build online. It is shaped by the conversations and experiences of autistic and disabled people from SEN schools, support groups, video games, and other online spaces.

Through video art, animation, sculpture, paintings, drawings, photography, and more, this exhibition explores how art and technology, from TV to Tumblr, video games to dating apps, have shaped lives, identity, intimacy, and imagination.





Image 1:
Flo Brooks
How to find a soul a home, 2023
Acrylic on linen, appliqué on found material and metal
204 x 173 x 1 cm

Image 2:
Juliana Huxtable
ANTHROPOD, 2023
Acrylic on printed canvas and plastic button
Each: 153 x 114 x 4.5 cm
Total: 153 x 360 x 4.5 cm