Layers of London

“The levels of the centuries are all compact, revealing the historical density of London. Yet the ancient city and the modern city literally lie beside each other; one cannot be imagined without the other. That is one of the secrets of the city’s power.” — Peter Ackroyd, London: The Biography

General Assembly and POLBEN’s Pigment present Layers of London, an exhibition that considers the city through what it leaves behind: its earth and minerals, buildings and industries, memories and human lives. London is not a finished metropolis, but something accumulating, century upon century. A place where things remain in circulation.

Layers of London began with a collection of pigments made from London itself. These materials were then shared with artists working across different disciplines, each invited to navigate their own path. Passing material from one person to another is central to the exhibition. Polly Bennett gathers something from the city and transforms it into pigment; another artist the takes the pigment and transforms it again. What happens next depends on who receives it, what they notice, and what they choose to do with it. The exhibition is less a portrait of London and more a series of encounters with it.

Lydia Halcrow encounters London through movement and touch. Using the pigments with an experimental drawing apparatus, she records the passage of her body across the ground in scratches, rubbings and tears. For Layers of London, she returned to the former site of Dyers’ Hall and the history of the dyers who worked along the Thames. Her own movement through the city meets the traces of those who moved through it before her.

Sarah Davis turns to two London places of personal significance: St Bartholomew’s Hospital and the River Thames. Drawing on the traditions of illuminated miniature painting and wood carving, she creates densely worked worlds populated by creatures, architecture and fragments of the city. Her slow, meticulous process draws the medieval city into the present, where the traditions of guild, craftsmanship and illumination meet contemporary London.

Mairi Millar considers belonging from the perspective of the traveller, noting “those who are born here; of bone, root and soil, create a space of belonging for us travellers.” Beneath glass cloches, pigment is transmuted into nest, tree, chrysalis, egg and flower - forms of rooting, shelter and transformation. The works imagine the city at its most generous: a place where those well rooted in place, make space for those who arrive.

With Filthy Mug (2026), Alma Berrow reminds us with a wink that London is not built only from grand histories, monuments and institutions, but from the countless lives and gritty realities lived among them. The things held, used, loved, broken, left behind, and unwashed.

Together the works in Layers of London carry the resonance of the city, in a continuous act of transmission and exchange. From city to maker, from maker to artist, and from artist to viewer. A city shared, transformed and carried forward.