About this Event
Join artist Sokari Douglas Camp CBE for a discussion about her new solo exhibition Fashion & Fortune with Dr. Melanie Vandenbrouck, Chief Curator at Pallant House Gallery. The conversation explores Douglas Camp’s working processes and creation of the artist’s new sculptures, while unpacking her daily approach to her work within her studio.
The talk will take place on the ground floor of the gallery and has disabled access.
The event accompanies Sokari Douglas Camp's new solo exhibition Fashion & Fortune at October Gallery. Douglas Camp observes how people of diverse ethnicities, social positions and occupations impacted the emergence of a distinctive sartorial culture across the Atlantic world. Commenting upon these imaginative displays, Douglas Camp notes that, “As a woman, I notice how colonised peoples and women of the diaspora cope; how they fashion their own styles, using whatever materials are to hand; how they forge a self-image that, by imitating and subverting their oppressors’ images of them, creates something that remains uniquely their own.” These latest sculptures tease out the complex intertwining histories of trade, colonialism and lineage, while simultaneously celebrating the resilience of the people of Africa and the African diaspora throughout the globe.
opens to the public on 21 May and continues until 27 June, 2026.
has nurtured and promoted extraordinary artists from a multitude of cultures — long before such global perspectives became common practice. The gallery has been widely valued as a nexus for artistic, intellectual and ecological collaboration, supported by a rich cross-cultural education programme. As we look ahead, we do so with the same pioneering spirit that defined our beginnings.
Your support helps us continue offering individuals and communities a welcoming, globally minded oasis. A small donation of £5 will help preserve our historic gallery as a sanctuary for creativity, ecology and learning. Please donate by clicking the link here.
About Sokari Douglas Camp
Douglas Camp first exhibited at October Gallery in 1985. She has had more than forty solo shows worldwide and in 2005, was awarded a CBE in recognition of her services to art. Her work is in the permanent collections of the National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., USA; Setagaya Art Museum, Tokyo, Japan; and the British Museum, London, UK. Douglas Camp is one of the winners of the Memorial for Ken Saro-Wiwa in London, 2007, and was also one of the shortlisted artists for the Fourth Plinth in 2003. In 2012, her large sculpture, All the World is Now Richer, a memorial to commemorate the abolition of slavery, was exhibited in The House of Commons; since touring to St Paul’s Cathedral in London, Bristol Cathedral, Norfolk Cathedral, Harewood House Trust in Leeds, and Westminster City Council Hall.
In 2016, her successful solo show, Primavera, at October Gallery, brought together major new sculptures which focussed on the reinterpretation of familiar figures from the European classic tradition as depicted by Botticelli and William Blake. Douglas Camp was selected for Ichihara Art X Mix 2020 (Japan) for which she created, on a moving tram carriage at Goi Station, a large-scale sculpture, titled Manmade. She was also one of the international artists selected to create a column for STOA16 in Polling, Germany; a globally unique artist columned permanent hall that unites contemporary artistic ideas and different cultural concepts in one place.
Her third solo exhibition at October Gallery in 2022, Jonkonnu Masquerade, included a series of new works exploring the masquerade of ‘Jonkonnu’ both within its Caribbean context and that of the broader African diaspora. This exhibition has coincided with her large-scale sculpture Europe Supported by Africa and America being displayed at the V&A to complement the Africa Fashion exhibition. Two larger-than-life-sized steel interlinking sculptures, Tussling Jonkonnu, have also been part of the Kensington and Chelsea Art Week.
In 2024, Douglas Camp was commissioned for a freedom memorial in Zaandam, the Netherlands. This public sculpture, Three Graces - The Dialogue, sits proudly in the Kleurenbuurt memorial site. This remarkable work features three sculptural women dressed alike, seated on a bench, symbolising a powerful narrative of freedom and celebration of culture of Surinam. In the same year, her striking steel sculptures were also featured in the 15th edition of La Biennale de l’Art Africain Contemporain Dak’Art in Dakar, Senegal.
In November 2025, Douglas Camp participated in the 10th anniversary of Art X Lagos with a presentation of her five Asoebi Women. She was also a key speaker at the Arete Art Foundation Symposium in Dakar, Senegal. Currently, Douglas Camp is working with Southwark Council for the potential permanent placement of her sculpture All the World is Now Richer in Burgess Park, Camberwell, London.
About Melanie Vandenbrouck
Vandenbrouck is Chief Curator at Pallant House Gallery. Formerly Curator of Sculpture 1900–Now at the V&A and Curator of Art Post-1800 at Royal Museums Greenwich in London, she has led major contemporary art initiatives. In 2022, she curated ‘Sokari Douglas Camp at the V&A’, setting the artist’s work at the heart of the sculpture galleries in South Kensington. Melanie’s wide interests include the porosity between artforms and the ways in which art and identity intersect. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, she holds a PhD from the Courtauld Institute and trained at the École du Louvre and Sorbonne University in Paris, and Sussex University in Brighton.
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
October Gallery, 24 Old Gloucester St, London, United Kingdom
GBP 0.00
