Focal Point Gallery

Focal Point Gallery Focal Point Gallery is South Essex’s gallery for contemporary visual art, promoting and commission

Closed for installation 🔧We are now closed as we install 'Phantom Power', a solo exhibition by Rosie Ridgway. Come and j...
03/06/2026

Closed for installation 🔧

We are now closed as we install 'Phantom Power', a solo exhibition by Rosie Ridgway. Come and join us for the opening celebrations on Saturday, 20 June, 3pm to 8pm. Everyone is welcome!

🎶Live music from 3pm feat.
Lady Neptune
Dean Rodney Jr. & The Cowboys
Frank Chickens

Exhibition Preview from 6pm with drinks, chips, and tunes!

A multidisciplinary artist and musician, Ridgway’s practice spans sound, performance, sculpture, and costume. Her work reinterprets cultural phenomena to construct alternative realities, often through collaborative and participatory approaches that generate humour and absurdity. At its core, her practice is driven by experimentation, a celebration of difference, and a commitment to accessibility.

🔗 Please RSVP via link in comments if you are planning to attend.

Please note that any orders from our shop may be delayed during this period. Email us at [email protected] if you require more information regarding your order.

🎥 Big Screen Spotlight: Pilar Elgueta, 'Bodies of Water: Prologue', 2023–24This film documents an action in which Pilar ...
29/05/2026

🎥 Big Screen Spotlight: Pilar Elgueta, 'Bodies of Water: Prologue', 2023–24

This film documents an action in which Pilar Elgueta casts her own arm in ice using water collected from a wetland. Constructing a mould capable of holding liquid, she freezes the water until it solidifies into a temporary replica. The resulting ice limb, at once sculptural object and fleeting form, is then returned to the site from which the water was extracted. An encounter: an arm that unmoulds an arm, an arm that mirrors an arm, a liquid corporeality activating itself, becoming landscape while undoing its recognisable form – shifting from a bounded identity into relational existence.


This film is part of a programmme that coincides with Lucía Pizzani’s exhibition 'Faunal Succession'. Works by Pilar Elgueta, Valentina Alvarado Matos and Rebeca Romero accompany a work by Pizzani. All four films look at the relationship between the human body and landscape, whether of this planet or otherworldly, presenting identity as something fluid that emerges through material, ecological, and spiritual connections.

Screened daily on rotation on the Big Screen Southend from Saturday 21 March to Friday 19 June 2025, 11am to 5pm. Find out more via link in comments 🔗

📷 1-3) Courtesy the artist

Last week to see 'Faunal Succession' by Lucia Pizzani!The exhibition closes on 30 May with workshops by Lucía Pizzani a...
27/05/2026

Last week to see 'Faunal Succession' by Lucia Pizzani!

The exhibition closes on 30 May with workshops by Lucía Pizzani and José García Oliva as part of our Creative Open Day. Come and pay us a visit and book your slot via link in comments!

The exhibition travels to KARST, Plymouth, where it opens on 11 June.

Faunal Succession reimagines the Essex coast through a ‘deep time’ lens, linking geological transformation with contemporary questions of climate change, migration, and social transformation.

This exhibition is generously supported by the Lucía Pizzani Exhibition Circle:
Victoria and David Law (lead supporter), Maria Sukkar (lead supporter), ERA FOUNDATION, Launch Pad, Aude Fourcade, Leslie Ramos and Thomas Forwood, Flavia Nespatti, Shelley Tichborne, Erica Wax, Sophia Paulina Wilhelmsen and those who wish to remain anonymous.

📷Anna Lukala

🎥 Big Screen Spotlight: Valentina Alvarado Matos, 'Levantamiento de una isla', 2017'Levantamiento de una isla' blends th...
21/05/2026

🎥 Big Screen Spotlight: Valentina Alvarado Matos, 'Levantamiento de una isla', 2017

'Levantamiento de una isla' blends the concept of a pliable element that can be shaped or broken to create a land tailored to the ideals and memories of a person in the diaspora. Through exercises involving redrawn maps, overlapping atlases, and the shaping of ceramics, the film intertwines the narratives and poetics of geography. New, tangible landscapes are deconstructed and reconfigured by hand, building a material landscape from clay.

This film is part of a programmme that coincides with Lucía Pizzani’s exhibition 'Faunal Succession'. Works by Pilar Elgueta, Valentina Alvarado Matos and Rebeca Romero accompany a work by Pizzani. All four films look at the relationship between the human body and landscape, whether of this planet or otherworldly, presenting identity as something fluid that emerges through material, ecological, and spiritual connections.

Screened daily on rotation on the Big Screen Southend from Saturday 21 March to Friday 19 June 2025, 11am to 5pm. Find out more via link in bio 🔗

📷 1-2) Courtesy the artist
3) Anna Lukala

📣EXHIBITION ANNOUNCEMENTRosie Ridgway: Phantom PowerCome and join us for the opening celebrations of Rosie Ridgway's sol...
20/05/2026

📣EXHIBITION ANNOUNCEMENT
Rosie Ridgway: Phantom Power

Come and join us for the opening celebrations of Rosie Ridgway's solo exhibition 'Phantom Power' on Saturday, 20 June, 3pm to 8pm. Everyone is welcome! The exhibition runs until 12 September.

A multidisciplinary artist and musician, Ridgway’s practice spans sound, performance, sculpture, and costume. Her work reinterprets cultural phenomena to construct alternative realities, often through collaborative and participatory approaches that generate humour and absurdity. At its core, her practice is driven by experimentation, a celebration of difference, and a commitment to accessibility.

🎶Live music from 3pm feat.
Lady Neptune
Dean Rodney Jr. & The Cowboys
Frank Chickens

Exhibition Preview from 6pm with drinks, chips, and tunes!
🔗 Please RSVP via link in comments if you are planning to attend.

📷 Rosie Ridgway (stills)

Blank Slate: Screenplay Writing Join us for the next session of Blank Slate with Kat Rollinson to explore and experiment...
19/05/2026

Blank Slate: Screenplay Writing

Join us for the next session of Blank Slate with Kat Rollinson to explore and experiment with screenplay writing ✒️✨Please note this session is for 13 to 16 year olds.

Participants will explore storytelling concepts by writing or breaking down examples, either from a favourite film or programme, or a new, personal original story or idea! Kat will also share her experiences in the industry and tips for getting started with creating stories for screen.

📆Thursday 28 May
🕓4:30pm to 6:30pm
🎫Book your tickets now, link in comments!

📷Courtesy the artist

"These works, in which I collaborated with artist Jaime Gili, reference William Smith’s 1815 geological map of England a...
14/05/2026

"These works, in which I collaborated with artist Jaime Gili, reference William Smith’s 1815 geological map of England and Wales, the first of its kind. It was, however, a very extractive view of the land and we wanted to think about mapping the land in an inclusive way, and as the entry point for the exhibition. The paintings that form the mural are cut into organic shapes and have been painted using minerals and pigments that are the same ones as the clay sculptures in the space. These ceramics depict the snake and the spiral, symbols that I always go back to, that are linked to our own DNA on a micro level, but also to the galaxy, the macro. They are very universal shapes that go across time and history, that have always been linked with transformation and healing, themes that are recurrent in my practice.

The mural ‘extends’ to the foyer of the gallery, where we included works made by
children who have English as an additional language, that attend Milton Hall
Primary School in Southend. They have worked with Jaime Gili on two workshops
and created their personal interpretations of maps, using pigments and watercolours." – Lucía Pizzani

Last few weeks to catch 'Faunal Succession' by Lucía Pizzani before it closes on 30 May – we are open from Wednesday to Friday, 11am to 5pm.

📷Anna Lukala

Join us for the next Creative Open Day with artists, Lucía Pizzani and José García Oliva leading us in two activities th...
10/05/2026

Join us for the next Creative Open Day with artists, Lucía Pizzani and José García Oliva leading us in two activities throughout the day.

Two workshops will run side by side throughout the afternoon, welcoming people of all ages to drop in, spend time making, and leave whenever they wish. These are open, informal spaces for playful exploration, reflection, and shared creativity across generations.

With Lucía, we will be using plants, dry seeds, and by drawing and shaping raw wet clay, the artists and participants will create monotypes on paper.

With José, we will explore language as something physical and unstable. Using sculptural paper, poetry, and free multilingual writing, participants will experiment with words as material forms rather than fixed meanings.

You can join for 20 minutes or you can stay with us the full day – you are very welcome either way!

📅 Saturday 30 May
⏰Open from 11am to 3pm
🎫Book your tickets now, link in comments

"Sci-fi themes have, in the past decade or so, served as a productive avenue for artists to critique the present and pro...
06/05/2026

"Sci-fi themes have, in the past decade or so, served as
a productive avenue for artists to critique the present
and propose alternative political imaginaries. What
about, though, the future’s counterpart, the past? And
not so much the past capturable by human memory
and historical testimony, but the eons prior to the
emergence of homo sapiens – the past of deep time?" - Matthew Bowman for Art Monthly

Come to see what Lucía Pizzani's exhibition Faunal Succession is all about! We are open Wednesdays to Saturdays, 11am to 5pm until 30 May.

To find out more about the exhibition, head to the link in the comments 🔗

📷Installation views of Lucía Pizzani, 'Faunal Succession', Focal Point Gallery, Southend-on-Sea, 2026. Photo: Anna Lukala

01/05/2026

As this is my last post, I an inviting you to listen (sound on!) and to appreciate the sound piece done in collaboration with musician Javier Weyler and the voices of artists, participants of the workshops, Focal Point staff, family and friends, most of whom migrated to this island in some point of their lives.

They are reading fragments from the geological book ‘Observer’s Book of Sea and Seashore’ (1962) by I.O Evan.

The diverse accents, ages, places and genders of those reading invite a plurality of perspectives into the words, originally intended to convey supposedly objective scientific truths.

The exhibition is on until 30 May – the gallery is open Wednesday to Saturday, 11am to 5pm, come and pay Faunal Succession a visit!

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Southend-on-Sea
SS11NB

Opening Hours

Wednesday 11am - 5pm
Thursday 11am - 5pm
Friday 11am - 5pm
Saturday 11am - 5pm

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