Workplace is pleased to present Ordinary Things, a group exhibition including new works by Eve Ackroyd, Tomas Harker, Xingxin Hu, Sooim Jeong, Joseph Jones, Maria Meyer and Sarah Poots.

Ordinary Things focuses on the often overlooked aspects of daily life — the banal, the mundane, and the seemingly insignificant moments that weave through our everyday existence. The group exhibition explores the quiet, fleeting interactions we experience, such as painting one’s nails or exchanging a glance with a stranger. These ephemeral moments, though brief, are rich with potential implication, suggesting that within the commonplace lies a world of untold stories and a multitude of possibilities.

Eve Ackroyd’s paintings depict everyday activities of women, situated in domestic settings both real and imagined. Drawing from a wide range of sources including film, literature, and her own personal histories, Ackroyd constructs intimate scenarios that evince both a quiet stillness as well as a palpable tension. Her work often captures moments of solitude, reflection, and quiet interaction, placing her figures in both mundane and dreamlike environments.

Tomas Harker’s work explores the search for meaning in an era defined by mediated experiences resulting in a fragmented and confusing reality. His paintings reflect the disorientation and complexity of contemporary life, where clear narratives are obscured and truth often feels elusive. Through ambiguity and the colliding together of disparate imagery, Harker’s paintings encourage a deeper, engagement with the world’s complexities.

Xingxin Hu's paintings explore themes of female identity, the paradoxes of self-perception and societal expectation, and the restless nature of human desire. Hu views her works as a collection of self-portraits, shaped by her personal experiences and rooted in the everyday - through the lenses of film, literature, and introspection. Pairing a luminous yet subdued colour palette with tightly cropped, filmic framing, her paintings evoke fleeting intimacies and the tangible tension of private moments.

Joseph Jones produces detailed paintings of cats and flowers that explore sensitive notions of care, compassion and nurture. The singularity of his paintings invite us to break away from frantic image consumption and instead ask us for a slower reading, challenging conventional perceptions, and prompting internal reflection.

Maria Meyer’s small-scale paintings explore the shifting meanings of objects and images as they move through different social contexts. Drawing from overlooked, everyday imagery from snapshots of strangers to second-hand items for sale, she deconstructs and decontextualises these found visuals to create new narratives. Meyer’s work invites viewers to reconsider how we assign value to images and objects, highlighting how small changes in context or composition can completely alter their meaning.

Sooim Jeong’s work draws from a wide spectrum of experiences, from the profound weight of tragic loss to mundane and seemingly trivial interactions with strangers. With a restrained and sensitive colour palette and minimal calligraphic brushstrokes, she constructs playful compositions. Bringing together disparate fragments of scattered past and more recent memories, Jeong recomposes these into images which each hold distinct and singular meanings.

Having learned traditional Korean calligraphy, she reimagines fragments of past and recent memories, transforming them into playful yet emotional compositions. She frequently incorporates familiar objects, like shirts, mittens, and vases, which take on new significance as personal symbols. Her paintings are further enriched with whimsical motifs of foliage, fruit, and smoke, reflecting both her introspection and the influence of her surroundings near Greenwich Park.

Sarah Poots' paintings focus on the intimate and personal, using everyday objects including drapery and candles as both symbols and fragments. These motifs, often cut out or arranged in layered compositions, invite contemplation on memory and touch. Central to her work is the tactile connection to the material world, with hand-tied mementos signalling the act of memorialising the ordinary. By pairing or grouping works, Poots creates a dialogue between them, offering a quiet, introspective space for the viewer to slow down and reflect on the subtle beauty in the everyday.