SLG Forever — highlights from a selling exhibition at Christie’s in support of the South London Gallery

Many widely held ideas about the relationship between art and society originate with John Ruskin, the English radical thinker who believed in the dignity of labour and the relief of poverty — and that art was essential to a good life. One of the many causes the Victorian intellectual championed was the establishment of working men’s colleges, where labourers could receive a university education.

The South London Gallery (SLG) has its origins in just such an institution. Founded by the philanthropist and Ruskin acolyte William Rossiter in 1868, with support from the Pre-Raphaelite painters Edward Burne-Jones and Georgiana Burne-Jones, and the Symbolist artist G.F. Watts, this working men’s college evolved into a free library and an art gallery in 1891, when it moved to its current address on the Peckham Road.

Today, the SLG remains a stronghold of progressive art and education. Situated in an area dense with social housing — somewhere the poet Caleb Femi describes as ‘a system of nerves’ — the large, red-brick gallery is at the centre of south-east London’s art community. Many well-known artists have or have had studios nearby, including Sir Frank Bowling, Sir Antony Gormley, Raqib Shaw and Edmund de Waal, and over the years the gallery has been a touchstone for up-and-coming artists, staging key solo shows by Tracey Emin, Ryan Gander and Christina Kimeze.

To mark the institution’s 135th anniversary, Christie’s in London is holding the selling exhibition SLG Forever, featuring work donated by artists who have a special affinity with the gallery, such as Emin, Gormley, Yinka Shonibare and Gabriel Orozco. The proceeds will support the organisation’s future projects. ‘Artists and philanthropists have been the life blood of the SLG since its foundation, and their support has been critical to its success ever since,’ says the gallery’s director, Margot Heller. ‘I’m deeply grateful to all the artists who have so generously donated works to SLG Forever, making it not only a richly engaging exhibition, but one that will raise the necessary funds to enable us to thrive into the future.’

Below are five highlights of the show.

Sir Frank Bowling, Snake, 2025

When Sir Frank Bowling turned 90 in 2024, he chose to celebrate the occasion by unveiling his newest painting, Skid, at the SLG. The artist has a studio nearby and considers Peckham, with its industrial estates and streets in the sky, to be an inspiration. His paintings are urban pastoral, every bit as compelling as the works of the Peckham oversoul, William Blake. Abstraction serves as a membrane between the imaginary and the real; poured acrylic bleeds into canvas embedded with scraps of debris he has picked up off the street — key rings, ribbons of packing tape, plastic bottle caps — offering an inventory of this astringent landscape.

Firelei Báez, Sbot’ sba’ (from obverse to reverse and discrete to continuous), 2026

Firelei Báez held her first major solo show in the UK at the South London Gallery in 2024. Born in the Dominican Republic in 1981, Báez is known for the spellbinding quality of her immersive abstract painting and sculpture installations. At the SLG, Báez transformed the space into a magical forest at night. The work was inspired by the Ciguapa, a female trickster spirit from the Carribean island of Hispaniola. ‘I wanted the Ciguapa to frolic, rebel and be unruly,’ said the artist. ‘I’m creating different ways of expressing that energy.’

Joseph Yaeger, Endless goodbye, 2024

The artist Joseph Yaeger takes his inspiration from an archive of film stills and images he has collected over years. His unusual technique — he paints in watercolour on gesso treated linen — means that the paint cracks over time, creating tiny jagged veins across the picture plain and upsetting the slick, hyperreality of his images. Born in Montana, USA, the Royal College of Art graduate has said that painting reflects what it feels like to be alive: ‘It very much can describe what it feels like to get pinched or bite your tongue.’

Francesca Mollett, Voices, 2026

Look closely at an abstract painting by Francesca Mollett and you might catch a glimpse of something recognisable before it dissolves into the background. Another graduate of the Royal College of Art, she has said that she plays in the liminal space between reality and abstraction, creating paintings that are about ‘a specific place, but it’s different levels of experience… like the way it remains in your memory after’. She takes inspiration from what she sees when out walking in south London, before returning to her studio to articulate those emotions on canvas.

Raqib Shaw, Ode to a country without a post office, 2024

There are infinite surrealities at play in Raqib Shaw’s imagination. It is as if his dreams have collided with Captain Flint’s treasure chest. His enamel paintings depict paradises teeming with wildlife and magical elements, referencing a combination of influences ranging from the High Renaissance to Mughal miniatures and Japanese woodblock prints. A long-term resident of south-east London, having converted a derelict factory in Peckham into a live/work studio, the artist has often said that he takes inspiration from the local area, incorporating its pedestrian strangeness into his ideas.

SLG Forever is on view at Christie’s in London until 24 June 2026, and online until 30 September. South London Fine Art Gallery and Library (registered in England with charity number 312160) will receive a minimum of 80 per cent of the sale price from each artwork included and sold in this exhibition

For more information on how you can support the South London Gallery, visit southlondongallery.org