Where creativity meets connection
Through large-scale, colourful drawings, printmaking, sculpture, and short stories, artist and climate activist Isabel Rock imagines a new world order populated by mutant hybrid species – giant slugs, feral rats, colossal pigs, and multi-limbed crocodiles – who have inherited the ruins of human civilisation.
Confronting pressing geopolitical questions – of capitalism, climate change, and repressive power structures – Isabel’s mischievous language of humour, drama and fanciful characters brings a lightness of touch that in no way belies the seriousness of her concerns.
From Sat 27 Sept, visitors to Hastings Contemporary will be invited to step into Isabel’s world. Pushing the boundaries of what constitutes ‘drawing’, the gallery will be transformed into a series of theatrical spaces that will explore the fantastical lives of these tough, dystopian creatures. In one, a life-sized papier-mâché rat sits in a rusting sports car, while in another a giant slug is ensconced in a replica prison cell. Are the new mutant creatures doomed to repeat the same mistakes as human civilisation?
“I had mixed feelings about the end of the world. I hadn’t been doing so great in the normal world, I’d sort of fallen behind, was hanging round the edges of what was considered a good and normal life… But there were no guarantees that the new world would be any better. In fact, I suspected that things would be even more difficult for someone like me.” – extract from Isabel Rock’s story The End of the World
Isabel’s recent experience in prison, after participating in Just Stop Oil protests, informs key aspects of the exhibition. During a month-long stay at HMP Bronzefield, Rock used drawing as a vital outlet, sketching her surroundings with salvaged materials, including opened-out envelopes and precious biros. This act of creative defiance underpins the exhibition’s recurring themes of survival, adaptation and connection.
Things Fall Apart, The Centre Cannot Hold is the outcome of the £10,000 Evelyn Williams Drawing Award 2023, in association with the Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize. The Evelyn Williams Trust supports the biennial award, which is delivered in collaboration between Drawing Projects UK, the Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize, and Hastings Contemporary. Isabel was the recipient of this award for her drawing Our Cell, a biro drawing on paper, and her accompanying exhibition proposal.
Isabel Rock said: “It is very easy to feel powerless and anxious with everything going on in the world. For me, drawing and creativity gives me a chance to take back control and spend a peaceful moment using my hands. There is so much power in creativity, power in community, power in collective action, power in love and compassion. I would like people to leave the show feeling thoughtful about the world, and inspired by creativity.”
Kathleen Soriano, Director at Hastings Contemporary, said: “Things Fall Apart continues Hastings Contemporary’s valued partnership with Drawing Projects UK and the Evelyn Williams Drawing Award where we are able to champion the inventive ways in which artists are centring drawing within their work. Isabel’s exhibition, her first solo show in a major national institution, promises a poignant, darkly imaginative journey into the possible futures that we may yet create, or inherit.”
An artist and creator of contemporary fairy tales, Isabel Rock crafts surreal narratives that blend humour, drama, hidden morals, and fantastical beings. Drawing on influences such as Japanese woodblock prints and Indian miniature painting, Rock has developed a distinctive collage technique combining bold structures, intricate details, and large-scale printmaking.
She studied Fine Art Printmaking at the University of Brighton and completed an MA at the Royal College of Art in 2008. Her work has been exhibited internationally, following her sold-out debut solo show at Bearspace Gallery, London (2009), and participation in the inaugural India Art Summit. In 2013, she won the Arts Foundation Printmaking Fellowship, funding a move to Berlin, before returning to the UK in 2017.
Taking part in actions by Extinction Rebellion, Insulate Britain and Just Stop Oil, she has been arrested multiple times and spent a month in prison after climbing up a gantry on the M25. Her drawing from HMP Bronzefield won the prestigious Evelyn Williams Drawing Award in association with the Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize in 2023.
Isabel Rock: Things Fall Apart, The Centre Cannot Hold comes to Hastings contemporary on Sat 27 Sept 2025 – Sun 15 March 2026
SALT Staff Writer
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