Join us for an illustrated talk online as part of the Basic Talks programme.
Join us for Basic Talks with Rhea Dillon – artist, writer and poet based in London.
Dillon works across sculpture, painting, olfaction and wide-ranging materials to articulate an aesthetic of diasporic Blackness grounded in a postcolonial nonbeing. Her charged exhibitions and writing use poet(h)ics, abstraction, and everyday objects to produce distinctive arrangements of sense and affect. Dillon’s work is a long intergenerational study that connects to her ancestors through her eclectic armoury and experimentation with different forms. The focus moves from Africa, to the Caribbean, to Britain, in historical currents propelled by the reality of British imperialism.
She was the guest editor of the 010 Interjection Calendar for Montez Press throughout 2024, celebrating a decade of artist-led contributions, which launched in May 2025 at Wendy’s Subway, NY. Dillon’s first institutional solo exhibition An Alterable Terrain was held at Tate Britain in 2023-4 as part of the Art Now series. To accompany this exhibition, a book of the same title was edited by her and published by Tate Publishing in 2024. In 2021 the artist presented Catgut – The Opera as part of Park Nights at the Serpentine Pavilion, and a publication of the same title was published in 2023 by Worms Publishing.
Recent exhibitions include ‘Gestural Poethics’ at Heidelberger Kunstverein, Heidelberg (2025, solo); ‘Accumulation – On Collecting, Growth and Excess’ at The Migros Museum of Contemporary Art, Zurich (2025); ‘Fractal Being’ at Cordova, Barcelona (2024, solo); ‘Gestural Poetics’ at Soft Opening at Paul Soto, Los Angeles (2024, solo); ‘Air de Repos (Breathwork)’ at Capc Bordeaux, France (2024); ‘Tituba, qui pour nous protéger?’ at Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2024); ‘Conversations’ at Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool (2024); ‘Burning Down the House: Rethinking Family’ at Kunstmuseum St. Gallen, Switzerland (2024); ‘Each now, is the time, the space’ at Lismore Castle Arts, Lismore (2024); ‘Janus’ at Berggruen Arts & Culture in partnership with The Kitchen, Palazzo Diedo, Venice (2024); ‘The Black Fold’ at Kunstverein Kevin Space, Vienna (2023, solo); ‘We looked for eyes creased with concern, but saw only veils’ at Sweetwater, Berlin (2023, solo); and ‘An Alterable Terrain’ at Tate Britain (2023-4, solo).
This autumn she has upcoming solo exhibitions at the American Academy of Arts and Letters, NY and Croy Nielsen Gallery, Vienna.
Attached are photos of Rhea as requested also with the credit lines as follows:
Image of Rhea: Photo credit: Clifford Prince King
Free, booking essential on Eventbrite. Those who book will be automatically sent the Zoom meeting details.
Basic Talks is a series of talks with leading contemporary practitioners, taking place at the Hugh Lane Gallery. Curated by Basic Space in partnership with Hugh Lane Gallery, BASIC TALKS is a platform for lectures, workshops, presentations, and performances. Speakers include artists, curators, writers, and critics who will generate discourse on producing, framing and exhibiting art. BASIC TALKS is a collaboration between Basic Space and the Hugh Lane Gallery, exploring alternatives in the dissemination of contemporary art and its discourses.
