New World Order: Summer 2025 Programme at John Hansard Gallery

New World Order brings together diverse voices from across the UK and around the world, fostering solidarity in increasingly divisive times through the unique perspectives of artists with varied lived experiences.

In an era characterised by geopolitical instability and shifting power dynamics, artists offer vital alternative perspectives on conflict and division. Through examinations of botany, community building, historical reflection, land rights, and domestic spaces, these exhibitions invite us to reimagine our relationship with the world around us.

Mykola Ridnyi: Mazepa's Ride
Ukrainian artist Mykola Ridnyi premieres his ambitious Mazepa trilogy, developed in collaboration with John Hansard Gallery since 2022. This culminating exhibition unveils two new artworks that extend Ridnyi's exploration of Ivan Mazepa's (1687–1708) contested legacy – a political and military leader of the Zaporozhian Sich and Left-bank Ukraine in the late-17th and early-18th century, whose story has been mythologised throughout European art and literature.

Morgan Quaintance: Available Light
Morgan Quaintance presents Available Light (2025), a major new film developed through an innovative research partnership with cultural sociologist Laura Harris, Anniversary Fellow at University of Southampton. Shot while visiting Japan, this immersive work explores notions of home and belonging through interviews with workers at the Edo Tokyo Open Air Architecture Museum, juxtaposed with conversations featuring renters in both Tokyo and London.

Alaa Abu Asad
In his video-essay Wild Plants of Palestine (2018), Alaa Abu Asad follows botanical expeditions led by Birzeit University professors documenting Palestinian flora in the West Bank. The work interrogates the territorial dimensions of what constitutes ‘Palestinian’ in a postcolonial landscape, while addressing photography's dual role as both a tool for knowledge dissemination and information control.

Abu Asad also presents his ongoing research project The dog chased its tail to bite it off (2019–present), which examines Reynoutria japonica (commonly known as Japanese knotweed) as a metaphor for exploring xenophobia, migration, and cultural acceptance.

Jumana Manna
Jumana Manna's film Foragers (2022) blends fiction, documentary, and archival footage to examine the impact of Israeli nature protection laws on Palestinian foraging traditions. Shot in the Golan Heights, the Galilee, and Jerusalem, the film captures traditional knowledge of wild edible plants alongside community resistance against prohibitive legislation that criminalises the collection of native plants like 'akkoub and za'atar. Through this lens, Manna questions who determines which traditions survive and which face extinction.

Kin Structures
Artists Kin Structures (Kwame Lowe and Arman Nouri) present …rooting (2025), showcasing their ongoing work to create infrastructure for cultural and community expression. Beginning in response to the erasure of community spaces in London, Kin Structures’ art/infrastructure practice reveals the conditions of contemporary urban governance and builds alternative infrastructures rooted in the lived experiences of marginalised communities.

Through four week-long residencies, Kin Structures will transform John Hansard Gallery into an evolving space for community engagement and organisational reflection. This project marks the beginning of a three-year collaboration with John Hansard Gallery’s Guest Curator Jack Ky Tan, exploring artistic practice within organisational development frameworks.