We are pleased to present Stranger Love. 

A group exhibition featuring eight artists working in the UK today. Exhibiting Artists: Tom Banks, Kirsty Harris, Daniel Bell, John Brennan, Paula MacArthur, Christopher Campbell, Hermione Allsopp, Joe Packer. 

Opening Reception: Friday 21 November 6-8.30pm 

Exhibition runs: 22-30 November 2025 

Hours: 12-6pm, Thursday-Sunday 

Location: Unit 2 Gallery, 8-10 London Rd, Saint Leonards-on-Sea, TN37 6AE #StrangerLove 

Negotiating the lines between ambiguous narratives and the spectacle of the decisive moment, Stranger Love explores fear as a site of inspiration and examines beauty as a response. At the core of this inquiry is the romantic notion that beauty can be a source of great consolation. While fear can be both timeless and constantly renewed, here eight contemporary artists approach it not with grim trepidation, but with what Immanuel Kant would describe as ‘quiet wonderment’ or ‘delightful horror’. 

The eerie nature of Tom Banks’ power stations, seemingly dumped into the landscape, have always invoked a sense of unease in him. His paintings focus on isolation in a general sense: political, emotional & existential isolation. They reciprocate the subtle paranoia of John Brennan’s paintings, which strive for a sense of compelling tension. Much of John’s work is inspired by his love of offbeat, kitsch and occasionally seedy British adventure sci-fi television and horror cinema. 

These in turn hint at some of the ominous Cold War themes of Kirsty Harris’s paintings and audio works. She returns again and again to a split second of destructive force, the detonation of the atomic bomb, and contemplates it over months of making. The ambiguous figures that appear in Daniel Bell’s paintings stem from various personal encounters at home and out in nature, the small canvases encase a cast of hybrid creatures, rotting surfaces and miscellaneous body parts.

Paula MacArthur captures the allure of crystals prompting uncomfortable questions about the underlying darker history of precious stones and their acquisition. Up close, the marks reveal a loose intensity; from a distance, the beauty of the image reasserts itself. The illusion becomes an object which reveals the process and the viewer can start to unpick how the image was constructed and imagine the movement of the brushes across the surface. 

Christopher Campbell paints the inevitable detritus of a consumerist system. Vivid scenes of discarded rubbish, nocturnal empty suburbia, burned-out cars, and landscapes tiptoe on the edge of desolation. 

The sculptural work of Hermione Allsopp tests how far an object can be pushed before it stops being useful and starts revealing something more about the world that produced it. The techniques she uses to distort everyday objects question the boundaries between attraction and repulsion, themes also explored by the work of Joe Packer. His canvases are consumed by fantastical, imagined foliage. In some ways Packer presents us with the conclusion and an epilogue, a tangible exemplification of the exhibition’s core theme. 

“While we know that beauty doesn’t have a moral duty to be inherently good, this exhibition lays out how anxieties can be transformed through a creative force, trawling through unexpected terrain.”

We warmly invite you to come and experience Stranger Love at Unit 2 Gallery, in St Leonards-on-Sea to see the award-winning artists’ new work. 

Press: 

For more information about the artists, images, or a price list please contact the curator: Tom Banks: info@tombanks.net 

Stranger Love is developed from the exhibition’s first Iteration, Strange Love at Bankley Gallery in 2018, curated by Dr Daniel Barnes.