Blog

Thank you to all the inspiring young photographers who entered this year’s competition, and congratulations to Pippa, aged 6, for claiming the top prize.

A special thanks to Fionnuala Boyd, Les Evans and Willie Robb for having the tough task of judging all of the amazing entries.

The MK Young Photographer exhibition is open at MK Gallery’s Project Space until 31 August. 2022. You can vote for your favourite photograph here.

Winners, Commendations and Special Mentions

4-6 Age Group

• Alana, aged 4
• Amelie, aged 4
• Zayn, aged 4
• Arthur, aged 5
• Tadhg, aged 5
• Ollie, aged 5
• Alice, aged 6
• JJ, aged 6
• Pippa, aged 6 (age group winner and overall winner)

7-10 Age Group

• Arya and Georgia, aged 7
• Ava, aged 7 (age group winner)
• Aidan, aged 7
• Betsy, aged 7
• Evander, aged 7
• Grace, aged 7
• Krishna, aged 7
• Marshall, aged 7
• Caden, aged 8
• Summer aged, 8
• Bella, aged 8
• Tiago, aged 8
• Mohit, aged 10

11-14 Age Group

• Sophie, aged 11
• Alex, aged 12
• Anya, aged 12
• Charlie, aged 12
• Dhillan, aged 12
• Eva B, aged 13
• Crystal-Rose, aged 13 (age group winner)
• Sumaya, aged 13
• Chloe, aged 14
• Eva, aged 14
• Emily, aged 14
• Ella, aged 14

15-19 Age Group

• James, aged 15
• Jessica, aged 15
• Charlie, aged 17
• Chole, aged 19
• Martha, aged 18 (age group winner)
• Zoe, aged 18
• Max, aged 19
• Sasha, aged 19

Through the mediums of performance, video and photography, collaboration and conversation, Harold Offeh is an artist who develops work that responds to places, situations and histories. Often the artist inhabits or embodies these histories, using humour to confront the viewer with alternative, forgotten or censored narratives.

In February 2022, Harold Offeh invited local people to be his tour guides of Milton Keynes. He was interested in what an encounter between a curious visitor – unfamiliar with a place and its history – and the people embedded in that place, would lead to.

In April, Offeh returned to Milton Keynes. This time, the artist worked with the same groups to create a collective map of Milton Keynes formed from individually-made tablecloths, candles and plates – all sculpted or decorated to reflect the stories, places and histories that had been revealed to him.

On Thursday 7 July 2022, the individual components of this map and their respective makers come together at MK Gallery for one night only. A selection of dishes chosen by groups involved in the map’s making will be presented on the map as well as recipes collected from people living across Milton Keynes, which connect them to a memory, a time or a place of personal significance.

Commissioned by Milton Keynes Arts Centre. Book here.

We are delighted to announce a new partnership between MK Gallery and Milk & Beans Coffee Roasters.

Milk & Beans is Milton Keynes’ first speciality coffee roaster, and the aim of the business is to show people that coffee can taste different depending on where it’s from and how it has been grown and processed.

The coffee MK Gallery is selling is from Mió, a family run farm in Brazil, who export, import, store and sell their own coffee. They guarantee 100% traceability for all of their crops, which is rare in the industry. The notes of this coffee are chocolate and tangerine.

Milk & Beans is now being served and sold in the MK Gallery caf̩ Рbe sure to pop by and try it out!

To mark the 102nd anniversary of the 1st Dada International Exhibition in Berlin, 31 d/Deaf, Disabled and Neurodivergent artists will stage Dada inspired interventions in 30 museums and galleries across Britain and Northern Ireland on the same day on 2 July 2022. MK Gallery is delighted to be one of the locations for this exciting event, with a performance lecture, FED UP, by artist Caroline Cardus in the Gallery’s Sky Room.

The event with the title We Are Invisible We Are Visible (WAIWAV) is presented by DASH, the disabled-led visual arts organisation, and was awarded the 2021 Ampersand Prize.

Mike Layward, DASH’s Artistic Director said: ‘To be awarded the Ampersand award for this surreal intervention will not only have a massive impact on Disability arts but will show that the visual arts institutions are now open and willing to change. DASH has a long history of producing provocative interventions that continue the legacy of Dada, Absurdism and Surrealism into the 21st century.’ 

The museums and galleries taking part include: Arnolfini, Baltic, Centre for Contemporary Art Derry, Firstsite, Focal Point Gallery, Golden Thread Gallery, Grizedale Arts,  Glynn Vivian Art Gallery,  Harris Museum and Art Gallery, HOME, The Hepworth Wakefield, Ikon, John Hansard Gallery, Leeds Art Gallery, Liverpool Biennial, Manchester Art Gallery, MIMA, MK Gallery, Modern Art Oxford, Newlyn Art Gallery, Nottingham Contemporary, The Pier Arts Centre, Site Gallery, Tate Britain, Tate Liverpool, Tate Modern, Tate St Ives, Towner Eastbourne, Turner Contemporary and VOID.  

Today we are delighted to welcome you to Vivian Maier: Anthology.
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​The exhibition features over 140 black and white and colour photographs, as well as film and audio which reveal the breadth of Maier’s work and her fascination for observing and recording everyday life.

Book your tickets here.

Pick up MK Gallery’s Summer/Autumn What’s On guide now with information on exhibitions, cinema, live music, performances and family activities for June, July, August, September and October.

You can download an electronic version here.

Larry Achiampong: Wayfinder will be our final major exhibition of 2022.

British-Ghanaian artist Larry Achiampong works in film, sculpture, installation, sound, collage, music and performance. His work draws on popular culture and his communal and personal heritage.

Included in his first major UK solo show to date is Achiampong’s debut feature length film Wayfinder, as well as a large presentation of his Pan African flags, life-sized Relic Traveller figures and Glyth collages. It will also reveal some of his influences from video games to the landscape paintings of JMW Turner.

Learn more about the exhibition and book your tickets here.

A huge congratulations to Ingrid Pollard who has been nominated for this year’s Turner Prize! ​Pollard has been nominated for the exhibition Carbon Slowly Turning – now open at MK Gallery. ​We are delighted to be able to showcase Ingrid’s work at our exhibition, which is the first major survey of her 40-year career.

The full list of nominees includes Ingrid Pollard, Heather Phillipson, Veronica Ryan and Sin Wai Kin, who will all have their work exhibited at Tate Liverpool from 20 October this year.

Book your free tickets to Carbon Slowly Turning at MK Gallery here

Pick up MK Gallery’s Spring What’s On guide now with information on exhibitions, cinema, live music, performances and family activities for March, April and May.

You can download an electronic version here.

Vivian Maier Anthology will be our second major exhibition of 2022.

Vivian Maier (1926-2009) has only recently been revealed as one of the most significant photographers of the 20th century. She was a professional nanny in New York and Chicago for over 40 years but took hundreds of thousands of photographs, which were found when her belongings went to auction in 2007.

Learn more about the exhibition and book your tickets here.

We are delighted to announce our next major exhibition, Ingrid Pollard: Carbon Slowly Turning.

Ingrid Pollard (born Georgetown, Guyana) is one of the leading figures in contemporary British art. This first major survey of her 40-year career includes delicately hand-tinted landscape photographs, a flotilla of small ceramic boats and a cast of protagonists that includes boxers, musicians, tango dancers and writers. The exhibition also includes two new works – a film that meditates on the human body as it moves through space and time, and a triptych of monumental, dynamic sculptures that reference our shared history of power relations and resurgence.

Winner of the Freelands Award 2020. Exhibition supported by Freelands Foundation.

Supported by a Publications Grant from the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art and the Association for Art History. An Exhibition Organised by MK Gallery in partnership with Turner Contemporary

Learn more about the exhibition and book your free tickets here.

Laura Knight loved to go to the circus and draw the clowns in their colourful and patterned outfits.

You can watch how to make your clown below.

We love to see what you’ve created. Ask your grown up to upload photos of your clown to Instagram and tag us @mk_gallery #LauraKnightMK