These Corroded Poems

A solo exhibition by Joseph Loughborough

Thursday 19 June 2025, 6–9pm
The exhibition continues untll Saturday 12th July.

In his most ambitious series to date, Joseph Loughborough invites us into a world shaped by salt, myth, and allegory. Inspired by Samuel Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, these works reimagine the sea as a psychological space, where each composition evolves as a weathered poem exploring his unapologetic creative style.

Bold yet fractured linework and impulsive gestures invite introspection. Figures appear caught in moments of silent ritual: steering, waiting, watching. Their faces are marked by wear and resolve, and their garments are ingrained with symbolic geometry, evoking both wreckage and armour.

Birds loom large — gulls and albatrosses rendered with both menace and sanctity. In Loughborough’s creations, they become more than fauna: they are omens, companions, judges. Elsewhere, fish drift like offerings, and skies glow with gold leaf, iconographic and indifferent.

While the visual language feels mythic, even timeless, these are not fables. These are portraits of endurance. Of reckoning. Of life lived at the edge of the world and the self. Loughborough invites us not to interpret, but to witness.

As with all great allegories, the sea here is never just the sea. It is psyche. It is theatre. It is a stage to watch existence unfold.

Whether you’re a seasoned collector or discovering his work for the first time, this is a rare opportunity to experience an artist at full force.