Six of London’s most compelling contemporary artists will come to Fitzrovia Quarter for a new studio residency at 53 Great Portland Street, transforming the space into an active creative hub in the heart of the West End.
Running from June to November 2026, this project brings together painters, sculptors and installation artists who will respond to the theme ‘What Holds Us Together’, exploring the connections between communities, memory and the changing city environment.
The residency provides six rent-free studio spaces at 53 Great Portland Street within a 1,000 sq ft creative hub, offering artists a dedicated space to develop and experiment with new work, drawing inspiration
from Fitzrovia Quarter’s cultural history and contemporary creative scene.
The six artists taking part in the residency area:
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Jingshan Ding: A visionary creator blending a background in biology from Imperial College London
with fine art from UAL. Shortlisted for the Paul Smith Foundation Art Prize 2025, Ding treats the city
like a living organism, mapping physical traces such as animal footprints, watermarks and tree bark
through beautifully layered, regenerating painted surfaces that evolve over time.
Purdey Fitzherbert: A London-born process painter who treats the city pavement as an active
artistic partner. Working on handmade Japanese paper, Fitzherbert creates heavily textured surfaces
using natural inks and raw materials gathered directly from London’s streets, including ash,
pulverised brick, chalk, rusted metal and urban dust.
Esmeralda Conde Ruiz: A Spanish sculptor holding an MA from the Royal College of Art whose
hypnotic installations use light, sound, glass and bioplastics to alter sensory perception. Currently
collaborating with the Federico García Lorca Foundation on a landmark memorial exhibition in Spain,
her work invites viewers to move from passive spectators to active participants.
Holly Keogh: A Goldsmiths MA graduate whose intensely physical painting process bypasses
traditional studio tools. Keogh paints vibrant, intimate imagery onto massive sheets of upholstery
foam before using her own body weight to soak and press the fragile figurative impressions onto
canvas, creating haunting works that explore glamour, public life and the anxieties of digital visibility.
Monya Riachi: An interdisciplinary artist and winner of the Boghossian Foundation Visual Arts Prize
whose research-led sculptures interlace poetry, raw matter and political geographies. Riachi
collaborates closely with musicians, scientists and craftspeople to transform heavy geological
elements into deeply accessible, personal stories of land and memory.
Tabitha Wilson: An RCA Painting MA graduate whose expansive, luminous canvases capture the
rhythm of sound, motion and states of flux. Attuned to the shifting qualities of light and refraction,
Wilson’s experimental surfaces blur the line between pure abstraction and raw, lived experience.
Purdey Fitzherbert says: “This residency gives me the space to think about how a city remembers as it
changes. I am excited to spend time moving through Fitzrovia, gathering details that can become part of the
work. Through my research, what interests me most is its constant transformation, and it is this sense of
change that I want to connect to my practice, which explores fading, erosion and the shifting life of surfaces.
