Nothing Gold Can Stay
Assembly 2025
The New Art Gallery Walsall is pleased to present Nothing Gold Can Stay, a group exhibition of newly commissioned work made during the second iteration of Assembly, a development programme for local artists held in partnership with arts organisation Multistory. This year we have supported Mia Banks, Mandeep Dillon and Tegen Kimbley. Through process and the formal parameters of sculpture, moving image and photography, the artists consider the complex tensions between time, the production of images and the ethics of viewership, exploring how practices of slowness and deep attention ask us to view the world differently.
Mia Banks’ installation Reconfiguration builds on her ongoing critical spatial practice, which focuses on the abstraction and reinterpretation of everyday materials found in urban environments. Challenging the value of everyday objects, she replicates these often overlooked architectural elements as artworks, questioning what is seen and what remains invisible. The work invites dialogue around how the city is shaped and whose experiences are acknowledged within it.
Mandeep Dillon’s multidisciplinary practice draws on ecocriticism and animal theory, exploring the transient physicality of both human and more-than-human beings. Her series of works Gradually then suddenly places emphasis on materials which are fragile and subject to deterioration. The use of latex – made from the blood of the Hevea Brasiliensis rainforest tree – speaks of bodies and lands made vulnerable. Reacting to subtle environmental changes, their swollen buoyancy hints at a sense of imminent collapse.
Tegen Kimbley’s new moving image work and photographic series Whispering Reeds reflects on the relationship between her father and his boat. Incorporating her father’s photographs and VHS footage alongside her own, the film is an intergenerational collaborative process between the two. Shifting between Tegen’s gaze on her father and her father’s gaze on the boat, the film explores the intimacy of looking as a contemplative act, one that acknowledges the other’s existence with reverence.
Artist biographies
Mia Banks is a multidisciplinary artist from Walsall, specialising primarily in sculpture with elements of photography. Her practice focuses on validating undervalued materials and textures found in everyday life. She combines mass-manufacturing and handcrafting techniques to extract and replicate existing textures from familiar settings onto various objects and surfaces. Through this process of extraction, she aims to encourage audiences to pay closer attention to their surroundings by offering a neurodiverse perspective—transforming overlooked everyday surfaces and materials into art. She previously won the Bowater Prize For Excellence (2024) and the Gertrude Emily Griffin Prize (2023).
Mandeep Dillon creates ephemeral sculptures that investigate the transient nature of human and non-human existence. Conflicted about occupying space and adding to a crowded world, temporality is an integral aspect of her practice. Made primarily from inflatables, her works are inherently fragile, their swollen buoyancy hinting at impending collapse. Often, photographs serve as the only lasting evidence of their existence. Viewers might engage with the sculpture in a way that is both abstract and visceral, their presence prompting kinetic reactions and an awareness of their embodied connection to the object. Based in Dudley, Mandeep has an MA in Sculpture from the Royal College of Art and is a member of the Royal Society of Sculptors. She won the Madame Tussauds Fine Art Prize for her MA show and was shortlisted for the Ingram Prize.
Tegen Kimbley is a documentary photographer. She graduated from The University of South Wales in 2018. Recent group exhibitions include Narcissus in Bloom, Ffoto Cymru 2024, Cardiff (2024), CYCLES, The Gap, Birmingham (2024), The Technician Show, Coventry (2022), Offsite 9: Wolverhampton Outdoor Market (2022), and PHRAME: Everywoman, Senedd Cymru -Welsh Parliament (2020). Exploring manmade environments Tegen documents the people and objects that inhabit them, creating narratives around the everyday and over-looked. Through considered composition, she attempts to generate dialogue around current environmental, social and economic issues, whilst creating a sense of atmosphere and place.
Preview
Thursday 17 July, 6-8pm
Free, all welcome
In Conversation: Mia Banks, Mandeep Dillon, Tegen Kimbley
Saturday 18 October, 2-3.30pm
Join all three artists for an informal introduction to their work.
