Sorry about the mess #2: 

Exhibiting artists: Ellen Angus, Sally Butcher, Jemima Brown, Sylwia Ciszewska-Peciak, Dyana Gravina, Helen Grundy, Laura Lulika, Lucy Nelson, Abigail Norris, Assunta Ruocco, Alice Sheppard Fidler, Daphne Wright, n:u

Birmingham School of Art is pleased to present Sorry about the mess #2, a group exhibition curated by Babe Station. The second exhibition in a series of Babe Station shows, this iteration brings together thirteen artists to explore mess not just as an aesthetic but a condition; an obstacle; a form of critique; a mode of play; a process of creation; an act of rebellion. Its title invokes the words uttered by countless mothers when welcoming visitors into their homes: an apology designed to smooth the exposed edges of the struggle, intimacy and disorder of domestic life. The apology here is insincere – a mockery of social expectation that gestures towards the long history of art schools’ inhospitable attitudes to artists with caring responsibilities, and the expectation that artistic practice should, or even can, be disentangled from care, domestic labour and the mess of everyday life.

Spanning sculpture, installation, video, painting and photography, the works sprawl across walls and floors and dangle from the ceiling. Bringing together invited artists alongside Midlands-based artists selected through an open call, this second iteration takes a darker, more unsettling turn, unravelling ideas around grief, illness, pain and alienation. At its centre is the body, stuttering, leaking, mutating, expanding.

Soft, body-like forms lean, hang, droop and flop across steel structures in Alice Sheppard Fidler’s site-responsive installation Where I Find Myself, their positions suggesting exhaustion and collapse as well as the act of letting go. In Jemima Brown’s Purry Furry, a hybrid cat-person sits amid a nest of pink duvets and pillows spilling across the gallery floor, while in Abigail Norris’s Withy and Taw, a giant black, furry creature makes a failed attempt to clamber up a stepladder, its skeletal body bound by rope to the steps. Nearby, sculptural installations built around images from Dyana Gravina’s Embodied Histories series confront bodily discomfort and the social conditioning of the body.

A hellmouth made from repurposed hospital gowns gapes open around Mummy needs a Tramadol, a new performance video by Laura Lulika, that considers consumption and what lives inside of us. In Helen Grundy’s large-scale collage The Helens, multiple versions of the self jostle for space in a surreal domestic environment, while Ellen Angus’s Mercreatures of the Post-Anthropocene comprises a collection of six totems crafted from wooden banisters with mermaid figurines trapped within them, floating in iridescent slime. Meanwhile, textile-printed images from Sylwia Ciszewska-Peciak’s ongoing series Touched Out, float lightly in the space, their delicacy contrasting with the overwhelm and latent violence of continual touch expressed through the photographs.

Elsewhere, the body becomes a site of grief, memory and loss. In Daphne Wright’s video work I know what it’s like, an elderly woman speaks six disrupted statements directly to camera in a haunting evocation of memory, heartache and isolation. Assunta Ruocco’s painting installation Cécile and the Black Dog comprises more than 80 portraits of her now-deceased mother, exploring cycles of grief and inheritance. In n:u’s dwelling (on stillbirth), appendage-like forms made from cotton sourced from the border between Senegal, Mali and Guinea hang from meat hooks and trail onto the floor.

Sally Butcher’s Dust Diary brings together envelopes of dust collected from her home with fragments of life writing, in a reflection on the (in)fertile (m)other and her current perimenopausal state, while Lucy Nelson’s sculpture Sometimes there is blood, a cluster of red droplets suspended around dangling tubes, evokes the brutality of the language used around pregnancy loss and within medical contexts more broadly.

Across the exhibition, mess becomes more than a condition to be apologised for. It becomes evidence of places and states inhabited, experiences endured and overcome, and lives lived on their own terms.

Accompanying programme of events:

Sorry About the Mess #2 runs from 1 to 23 October 2026.

Opening party: Tuesday 6 October, 5-7pm, featuring a live performance by Dyana Gravina at 5pm.

Babe Station Live #4: a night of readings and performances: Tuesday 20 October, 5-7pm

Printmaking workshop for families presented by Assunta & Lou: Thursday 22 October, 4.30-5.30pm

The exhibition is otherwise open from Monday to Friday, 10am to 4pm.

About Babe Station

Babe Station, founded by writer Millie Walton, is an artist-led organisation that explores the relationship between making art and the maternal experience. It embraces an expansive understanding of motherhood and works with artists who self-identify as mothers across diverse lived experiences including pregnancy and child loss, and infertility issues. Alongside exhibitions, Babe Station runs Babe Station Live, a roaming series of literary and arts events featuring performances and readings, regularly hosts workshops and talks, and recently launched an Artist Development Programme for Parents and Carers in partnership with Kinfolk Families and MATERNAL FANTASIES. https://www.babestation.org.uk/

About the Birmingham School of Art Gallery

Throughout each academic year the gallery is host to numerous exhibitions and events. These include public facing professional artist exhibitions, the annual undergraduate and postgraduate Degree Shows, student exhibitions, annual Colmore BID exhibitions, performance events, Night Schools etc. In the 2026/27 academic year the gallery is excited to host several professional budgeted public facing shows.

Birmingham School of Art Gallery, Margaret Street, Birmingham, B3 3BX

1-23 October 2026, Monday to Friday, 10am-4pm

Opening party: Tuesday 6 October from 5-7pm, with a live performance by Dyana Gravina commencing at 5pm