31 January - 28 February 2026
Film still from Sculptor Machine by LITTLE WARSAW, 2014. Digitalized 16 mm bw archive films
The exhibition brings together works by Budapest based
artist collective Little Warsaw and London based artist
Sarah Dobai. The premise for the show relates to their
ongoing conversation which began with their shared interest
in speculative fiction.
The show takes place
against the fraught political backdrop in Central Europe
and beyond. Like much of Little Warsaw’s practice, Sarah
Dobai's films and photographs included here reflect
on the unintended consequences of historical circumstance
and how this can frame the production and reception
of the works in both practical and symbolic ways.
Sarah Dobai works with photography,
film, publication and performance to explore authorship
and representation. Her recent works look to classic
works of cinema or literature as a means to reflect
on contemporary concerns in a historical setting. Her
recent film The Donkey Field was shown at Whitechapel
Art Gallery, Danielle Arnaud Gallery & the Imperial
War Museum (London) and Olomouc Museum of Modern Art.
Her work has been widely exhibited internationally and
has had recent solo shows at Glassyard Gallery (Budapest),
Or Gallery (Vancouver) and FILET (London). She is a
Reader in Photography, Text and Film- based Practice
and is a Senior Lecturer in Fine Art at Chelsea College
of Arts, University of the Arts, London.
LITTLE WARSAW is the collaborative practice of András Gálik (Budapest, 1970) and Bálint Havas (Budapest, 1971), active since 1995. They live and work in Budapest. Conceived as an evolving project, Little Warsaw addresses historical memory and confronts personal encounters with social experience through films, installations, and a wide variety of media. By examining the role of the artist not only as a producer of images, objects, or situations but as an active agent in shaping the context in which they are embedded, Little Warsaw’s manifold investigations present the artwork itself as a subject of political, sociological, and ideological changes. In recent years, their personal perspectives have become more interwoven with their collaborative work, particularly in how their individual micro-histories and family legends intersect with broader political and social contexts. The radical gestures of intervention in their early works are often complemented by a more poetic form of expression, that of literature. At their solo exhibition at Secession Vienna, they presented a group of works centred around a collectively written novel fragment, Naming You
Since 2003, Little Warsaw’s work has been widely
exhibited internationally. They have had solo exhibitions
at Museum Abteiberg, Mönchengladbach; AZKM; Galerie
für Zeitgenössische Kunst GFZK, Leipzig; and Secession,
Vienna.Their projects have been included in the 2nd
Berlin Biennial; the 50th Venice Biennale; Manifesta
7 in Rovereto; the 12th Bienal de Cuenca; as well as
in numerous group exhibitions throughout the world —
e.g., Time and Again at Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam;
Re_dis_trans – Voltage of Relocation and Displacement
at Apexart, New York; and the travelling exhibition
Tee with Nefertiti at Mathaf, Doha, Qatar; IVAM,
Valencia; and Institut du Monde Arabe, Paris; Not
In My Name at CCA, Tel Aviv; OFF-Biennale, Budapest;
and The Problem of God at K21 – Kunstsammlung
Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf; Little Warsaw’s works
are held in several prestigious international public
and private collections, such as: Centre Pompidou, Paris;
MUDAM – Musée d’Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean, Luxembourg;
Ludwig Museum – Museum of Contemporary Art, Budapest;
Muzeum Współczesne, Wrocław; Kontakt — The Art Collection
of ERSTE Foundation, Vienna; Carré d’Art – Musée d’Art
Contemporain, Nîmes; Art Collection Telekom, Frankfurt;
and Kadist Foundation, Paris.
Together Little
Warsaw and Sarah Dobai’s works reflect on the unintended
consequences of historical circumstances and how this
can frame the production and reception of an artwork
in both practical and symbolic ways.
The exhibition
will be accompanied by a gallery publication with new
essays on the presented works by Jean-Marc Prévost and
John Douglas Millar.
Jean-Marc Prévost is an
art historian and Chief Curator of Heritage. He has
held key positions at major cultural institutions and
is renowned for his curatorial work in contemporary
art. He served as Director of the Contemporary Art Museum
of Rochechouart, where he organized notable exhibitions
featuring international artists such as Rodney Graham,
Michelangelo Pistoletto, Richard Deacon, Rineke Dijkstra,
Gillian Wearing, Douglas Gordon, and Gabriel Orozco.
In 2012, Prevost became director of Carré d’Art – Musée
d’Art Contemporain in Nîmes, where he curated critically
acclaimed solo exhibitions by Stan Douglas, Walid Raad,
Anne Imhof, Suzanne Lafont, Rayyane Tabet, Wolfgang
Tillmans, Jeff Weber, Yto Barrada, LaToya Ruby Frazier,
Anna Boghiguian, Abraham Cruzvillegas, Tarik Kiswanson,
Rosalind Nashashibi, and Glenn Ligon. Under his leadership,
the museum also presented ambitious thematic shows such
as Norman Foster on Art, Suspended Choreographies: Contemporary
Art in Vietnam, Personal Cuts: Art in Zagreb from 1950
to Today, and A Different Way to Move: Minimalism and
Postmodern Dance. Prevost has also served as a curator
within the French Ministry of Culture's General Directorate
for Artistic Creation. Among his international projects,
he curated the 10th anniversary exhibition of the Marcel
Duchamp Prize, presented at both the Mori Art Museum
in Tokyo and the Museum of Modern Art in Seoul. In 2005,
he curated Leviathan by Ernesto Neto at the Panthéon
in Paris as part of the Festival d’Automne. In 2025
The Shade , Gallery Sfeir Semler, Beirut ; Tarik Kiswanson
- Fora do Tempo , Fondacao Ibère Camargo, Porto Allegre
John Douglas Millar is a writer based in London.
He is currently working on a biography of the American
photographer Peter Hujar to be published by Fitzcarraldo
Editions in the UK and Liveright/Norton in the U.S (Both
2029). With Gary Schneider he co-curated Peter Hujar:
Eyes Open in the Dark at Raven Row Gallery, London,
which opened in January 2025. The exhibition will travel
to the Bundeskunsthalle, Bonn, Germany, in February
2026.