The Wick List

Viewing The Land Sings Back at The Drawing Room

The Wick Culture - Manjot Kaur, The Convocation of Eagles (detail), 2025, Gouache and watercolour on wasli paper, 60 x 90 cm, Courtesy of the artist and mor charpentier, Paris, © Manjot Kaur

Above Manjot Kaur, The Convocation of Eagles (detail), 2025, Gouache and watercolour on wasli paper, 60 x 90 cm, Courtesy of the artist and mor charpentier, Paris, © Manjot Kaur

The Wick Culture - Lado Bai Peeple ka ped (Peepal Tree), early 1980s, gouache on paper, 71.5 x 50.8 cm, courtesy Rob Dean Art

Above Lado Bai Peeple ka ped (Peepal Tree), early 1980s, gouache on paper, 71.5 x 50.8 cm, courtesy Rob Dean Art

The Wick Culture - Charmaine Watkiss The warrior exercises the right to dissent, 2025, coffee, water soluble graphite, pencil, coloured pencil, watercolour & shell gold on paper, 76 x 56 cm, courtesy the artist

Above Charmaine Watkiss The warrior exercises the right to dissent, 2025, coffee, water soluble graphite, pencil, coloured pencil, watercolour & shell gold on paper, 76 x 56 cm, courtesy the artist

The Wick Culture - Otobong Nkanga Subsidence, 2025, acrylic and carbon on paper, 28.8 x 21 cm © Otobong Nkanga; Courtesy of Lisson Gallery

Above Otobong Nkanga Subsidence, 2025, acrylic and carbon on paper, 28.8 x 21 cm © Otobong Nkanga; Courtesy of Lisson Gallery

Above Manjot Kaur, The Convocation of Eagles (detail), 2025, Gouache and watercolour on wasli paper, 60 x 90 cm, Courtesy of the artist and mor charpentier, Paris, © Manjot Kaur

Above Lado Bai Peeple ka ped (Peepal Tree), early 1980s, gouache on paper, 71.5 x 50.8 cm, courtesy Rob Dean Art

Above Charmaine Watkiss The warrior exercises the right to dissent, 2025, coffee, water soluble graphite, pencil, coloured pencil, watercolour & shell gold on paper, 76 x 56 cm, courtesy the artist

Above Otobong Nkanga Subsidence, 2025, acrylic and carbon on paper, 28.8 x 21 cm © Otobong Nkanga; Courtesy of Lisson Gallery

The Land Sings Back

The Drawing Room
25 September 2025 – 14 December 2025

If you want to get away off the beaten path this week, The Wick recommends a trip to Bermondsey to see The Land Sings Back, a special collaboration between the Drawing Room and Colomboscope – a contemporary art festival and creative platform for interdisciplinary dialogue in Sri Lanka founded in 2013.

The beautifully curated group show reimagines our relationship with our breathing planet, through the vibrant, enquiring and delicate works of thirteen artists from South Asia, Africa and the Carribean, who each delves into their ancestries and inherited wisdoms to consider environmental justice, and drawing’s potential as an active agent of social histories.

The vivid, contemplative and evocative works by artists including Shiraz Bayjoo, Otobong Nkanga, Rupaneethan Pakkiyarajah, Pamela Phatsimo Sunstrum, and Charmaine Watkiss, disentangle drawing from its colonial uses and reinstate it as a tool for transference of indigenous knowledge, ecological and philosophical meanderings.