Current Exhibition

Anna Frijstein

I am more than porridge

19 May – 15 September 2025

opening event with artist-curator talk: Sunday 15 June, 14:00 - 18:00

It’s all gone a bit pear-shaped. A pot of porridge is bubbling over, the tea towel is in tatters, and now the kids have started crying. Mayhem? Or, the ultimate embrace of the messy expansiveness of life as it sputters and leaks out around us.

The development of characters has always been a core part of Anna Frijstein’s work. Since becoming a parent, this cast of figures has turned to archetypes of motherhood – embodiments of parenting styles which are scenario-tested in these works.Bold, personal, and fused with ambivalent emotions, Frijstein’s alter-ego’s include Spider mum, a secret superhero, living a double life as an artist. Helicopter mum is overreaching; consistently hovering over the child to manage situations, whilst Unicorn mum gallops through life as the fun rebel, with a good ‘bad’ streak. Pear mum draws from European folklore, where the pear is a symbol of fertility and abundance. This pear is bittersweet – vulnerable and full of life.

Anna Frijstein (b. 1991, The Netherlands) lives and works in London. Frijstein’s work playfully evokes the bestial side of ‘socialised’ human beings. She embodies animals, plants, planets, fruits, and other beings, scrutinising human behaviour in absurdist performances, paintings, drawings, collages, videos, and sculptural installations. Discarded cardboard, found textiles, her own clothes, and other preloved bits are ritualistically re-used as surfaces to paint and write on. Beneath the works’ childlike gestures, and poetic light-hearted titles, lies an unsettling layer of dark humour, full of bittersweet, raging, raw feelings around socio-psychological and ecological issues.

Selected exhibitions and performances include Sorry about the mess, 125 Shaftesbury Avenue, London (2025); Prospects & Concepts, Art Rotterdam (2024); Let Them Eat Fake, Bad Art Presents, London (2023); RiverRun, Lighthouse, Poole (2021); The Domestic Landscape, Jupiter Woods, London (2019); Nothing Really Mattress, South London Gallery (2018); Life/forms, Chisenhale Art Place, London (2018); LOCKERS, Museo Nacional Cento de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid (2016); and Marres Tourist Office, Marres, Maastricht (2016). She completed her MA at the Royal College of Art, London, in 2019 and holds a BFA Fine Arts from the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam.

Curated by Kip, a nomadic project presenting solo exhibitions in unusual gallery spaces, run by Mark Couzens and Lucy Cowling.

Curator’s corner 

Throughout 2025 the exhibition programme is being guest curated by Lucy Cowling. Dorus’ exhibition is part of Kip, a currently nomadic project she runs together with Mark Couzens, which presents solo exhibitions in unusual spaces. 

Lucy says: “Mark and I landed on the name Kip because of both the English meaning (a small nap), with the idea that this project represents a break from our day-to-day, and the Dutch meaning, which is chicken. We love that Dorus has really run with this and brought it to a whole new level, by including 431 prints of pencil drawings depicting male chicken varieties, which will tile the walls of DKUK”.

Pop into the salon to view this exciting exhibition and refresh your look!