Image: The New Art Gallery Walsall, London
The New Art Gallery Walsall has announced a major solo exhibition of drawings and sculpture by British artist Charmaine Watkiss, titled 'The things we hold sacred'. The exhibition will open on 3 October 2026 and run until 11 April 2027, with a preview on 2 October from 6 to 8 pm. It will take place on Floor 3, and admission is free.
According to the gallery, the exhibition brings together newly commissioned sculptures, Watkiss’s most significant sculptural installation to date, and loans from private and museum collections. The presentation is framed around a long-running body of research-based work that explores plant knowledge handed down through Caribbean families, healing traditions passed along the maternal line, and lineages traced to Africa through the transatlantic slave trade.
Watkiss, born in London in 1964, has become known for drawing practices rooted in these themes. The gallery says her work has also considered how plant knowledge has entered western science, while her newer work extends that enquiry into spiritual and mystical territory. The exhibition will show how she has broadened her materials and processes to work in three dimensions using clay, brass, copper, wood and crystals.
Central to the exhibition will be a brand-new commissioned sculptural installation supported by a Jerwood Art Fund Commission Grant and delivered in partnership with Coventry University’s School of Arts and Creative Industries. The gallery says Watkiss spent time in residence at Coventry University, working closely with staff and students and making use of the university’s space, facilities and expertise. The commissioned work will enter Walsall’s Collections.
The project will also be accompanied by a publication featuring essays by Isabel Seligman and Cindy Sissokho. The publication is supported by the Paul Mellon Centre. Alongside the exhibition, the gallery has scheduled an in-conversation event on Saturday 13 March at 2 pm, when Watkiss will speak with Indie Choudhury. Booking for that event opens in October 2026.
The announcement places the exhibition within the gallery’s contemporary programme, where it joins other displays listed for the same period. The gallery’s materials identify the show as a major new solo exhibition and pair it with the preview date of Friday 2 October, 6 to 8 pm, on Floor 3 at The New Art Gallery Walsall, Gallery Square, Walsall WS2 8LG.
