SOUVENIR AT FITZROVIA CHAPEL

We’re thrilled to be the inaugural Curators-in-Residence at the glorious Fitzrovia Chapel. Details of our first exhibition have just been released. Drawing on strategies of filmmaking and storytelling and pulling from literature, performance, music, visual arts, craft and design, Souvenir is the first in a trilogy of exhibitions we will curate throughout 2026 in the Chapel’s glimmering and profound interior – an enchanting jewel of Byzantine-inspired architecture in the heart of London. 

At the heart of Souvenir is Michael Bracewell’s haunting eulogy to the London of the late 1970s and early 1980s; a city poised between the twilight of one era and the dawn of the new digital era. With the novella as its touchstone, this singular exhibition will suspend visitors in an atmospheric state, harnessing the Chapel’s innate magical space as a kind of living keepsake – an architectural memory frozen momentarily outside of time and space. 

Passages from Bracewell’s vivid text will be brought to life as a recorded sound piece, voiced by actor Paul Kaye, who was a student at Harrow School of Art during the period the book is set. This is accompanied by a new composition from composer and piano inventor Sarah Nicolls created on her radically modified upright grand piano. Her celebrated Inside-Out Piano will be installed before the Chapel’s marble altar. 

Bristol-based artist Matthew Healey will reflect on the Chapel itself as a symbol of a vanishing London. Drawing on his expertise as a prop-maker, he is crafting a scale model of the Chapel as it stood after the demolition of the Middlesex Hospital – enshrined within an oversized snowglobe.  

Alongside this, the London-based artist and filmmaker Sal Pittman will bring her cinematic, site-responsive approach to the exhibition, designing a series of  unique vignettes within the audio environment.

Continuing our long-term collaboration, audio design will be led by Raj Patel at Arup, with Joseph Digerness and Matthew Lomax, bringing their unique combination of skills in acoustics and spatial sound design to craft the sonic experience with us. Graphic design for the exhibition is by the acclaimed art director and designer Chris Bigg, with photography by Paul Heartfield.

Souvenir will be followed by two further exhibitions curated by the us: Miseris Succurrere Disco, from 6 – 25 March 2026 and Middlesex Hospital Blues, from 16 October – 18 November 2026. More details about those will be announced soon.

The Fitzrovia Chapel, 2 Pearson Square, London W1T 3BF

Opening times: 

11am to 6pm Monday – Saturday 
12pm to 5pm Sunday
Admission free 

fitzroviachapel.org
@fitzroviachapel