Image: Ben Uri Gallery, London
Ben Uri has launched 'The Last Carriage', a virtual group exhibition featuring mostly young artists who left Russia after the full-scale war in Ukraine. The exhibition is presented as the week’s featured online show in Ben Uri’s digital programme, with the institution describing it as the first week and launch of the project on Monday 27 July.
According to the source text, the exhibition brings together artists whose work reflects “escape and hope for a better life.” Ben Uri says the title refers to the phrase “to jump into the last carriage,” which it glosses as a narrow escape from danger and a chance to survive or seize an opportunity for a better future. The artists included in the exhibition are said to each approach that theme through their own personal experience.
The launch sits within Ben Uri’s wider digital-first activity, which the organisation says it has pursued since 2018 in order to move from local to global access. The gallery and research institute presents itself as a digital research centre and museum with a physical presence in London, and its website regularly combines exhibitions, collection material, essays, podcasts and video content. In the same weekly email that announced 'The Last Carriage', Ben Uri also promoted other online resources and exhibition-related features across its research and collection platforms.
No venue is listed for the exhibition in the source material, and the announcement identifies it specifically as a virtual exhibition. That format aligns with Ben Uri’s current online exhibition model, which the institution says allows audiences to explore its programmes remotely and on a flexible schedule. The gallery notes that visitors can discover this exhibition alongside more than 80 others on its website.
Ben Uri’s institutional focus provides the context for the choice of subject matter. The organisation describes its mission as celebrating, researching and recording the contribution of Jewish, refugee and wider immigrant communities to British visual culture since 1900. Its Research Unit presents material on artists, photographers, designers, dealers, teachers, critics and other cultural figures, with a particular focus on migration, displacement and historical change.
In that framework, 'The Last Carriage' extends the gallery’s continuing interest in artists shaped by forced movement and political upheaval. The exhibition’s emphasis on young artists who left Russia after the 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine places contemporary migration and artistic response at the centre of the presentation, while the title’s imagery frames departure as both risk and possibility.
Ben Uri lists the exhibition as its featured virtual show for the week beginning 27 July. The gallery says the project is available online now, alongside its other digital offerings, and describes its regular opening hours for in-person visits as Wednesday to Friday from 10 am to 5.30 pm at 108a Boundary Road, St John’s Wood, London.
