by Akin Oladimeji // Oct. 22, 2025
Drawing on her academic background in philosophy, British poet and visual artist Arch Hades blends surrealism and romanticism with literary references in her first solo exhibition in London. The works on view at the outpost of Switzerland’s LICHT FELD Gallery on Berkeley Square represent a cross-section of Hades’ work over the past few years.
Arch Hades: ‘It’s time to return the love I borrowed,’ Confession Series, 2025 // Courtesy of the artist
Setting the tone, the ‘Confession’ series is the first thing that we encounter as we enter the gallery. Each of the three sculptures near the entrance resembles a crumpled sheet of paper with a line from journals Hades has been keeping over the past 20 years. The lines have been hand painted on the concrete canvases. One of them is called ‘I catch myself mourning the present like it’s already a memory.’ In conversation, the artist revealed that grief counselling has helped her uncover the fact that she often forgets to be mindful of the present, projecting her thoughts into the future, a traveller in time never fully here. The sculptural nature of the diary writing here reminds me of Deanna Templeton’s ‘What She Said’ (2021), in which she paired entries from her teenage diaries from 1984-88 with images of teenage girls. Templeton’s teenage writing is largely self-critical, as she frets about not being pretty or thin enough. Hades’ fragments of writings are equally confessional and also reminiscent of Tracey Emin in their vulnerability.
Further into the show, the ‘Murmuring Bark’ series of installations consists of artificial trees with a silver “heartwood,” positioned in a cluster. Placing our ears next to them, we can hear the artist read poems from her second collection of poetry entitled ‘Fool’s Gold.’
Arch Hades: ‘Rain,’ 2025 // Courtesy of the artist
Nearby, ‘The Rain’ is a large installation made of dibond aluminium composite and acrylic polymer. Lines from a poem ‘The Flowers Blue,’ from her fifth collection, are embossed on the sides. At the base, she has created what look like puddles dripping over the edge of the installation, a nod to Dali. The scale and combination of elements make it an arresting work. Another sculpture, titled ‘Isle,’ serves as a heartfelt homage to the island of San Michele in Veneto, nestled between Venice and Murano. Its entire expanse is a cemetery, earning it the somber title of the “island of the dead.” Several poets and artists are buried there and, as a tribute to them, around the base of the work Hades has inscribed a poem from her third volume. There is a figure in a white shroud standing in front of the tombstones, a gesture of loss and longing.
In one of the paintings, two siren-like forms appear in a dark void. They faintly shine—naked and intertwined, their long hair woven into a single braid, almost as if they share the same breath. Their limbs extend and blend into the emptiness, making them seem inseparable and surreal. Above them, the words: “I wonder if you feel it, when I’m dreaming of you?” drift like a whispered secret in the night.
Arch Hades: ‘Pair,’ 2025 // Courtesy of the artist
In her painting entitled ‘Montana,’ Hades adorns the frame with the phrase “We are all just passing through,” which not only gives the exhibition its title but also alludes to a sense of mortality that we find in other works on view. In the middle of a rugged landscape, a pair of striking equine creatures—hybrids of camel and horse—gallop, like a caravan navigating the desert. Hades starts with a black canvas for all of the paintings, and for this one, she made the landscape grey, and the beasts aquamarine and pale blue. They appear as powerful symbols of our fleeting time on Earth, the ephemeral nature of existence, the tiny amount of time our lifespans take up.
Arch Hades: ‘Montana,’ 2025 // Courtesy of the artist
In a similar vein, Hades nods to Caspar David Friedrich’s painting of a man in a black robe gazing at the sea (‘The Monk by the Sea,’ 1810). In her version, a person in an identical pose and clothing of a similar dark brown gazes at the sea and the setting sun. However, the work becomes more surreal here, as a large face like a fragment of a Greek statue looms on the horizon. The title ‘The Sea, The Sea’ (borrowed from Iris Murdoch’s novel of the same name) reinforces the layered nature of Hades’ work, which intertwines references from literature and visual art, in addition to her own poetry.
Arch Hades: ‘The Sea, the Sea,’ 2025 // Courtesy of the artist
Though self-taught, the artist has clearly immersed herself in art and its history, digging like Seamus Heaney did with his pen, to see how poetry can be stretched into visual art and what visual art can take from poetry, how they speak differently and yet can speak to each other.
Exhibition Info
LICHT FELD Gallery
Arch Hades: ‘We are all just passing through’
Exhibition: Sept. 12-Dec. 21, 2025
lichtfeld.ch
8 Berkeley Square, London W1J 6BU, UK, click here for map
