About

Aspex Portsmouth is a visual arts and educational charity bringing new art and ideas to the heart of the city.

Located next to Portsmouth’s historic waterfront in the Gunwharf Quays complex, Aspex lets visitors immerse themselves in contemporary art and culture within its vibrant gallery space.

There is a diverse programme of art and community exhibitions; events and activities (including workshops and lates); a shop featuring a collection of prints, gifts and more; and an independent cafe.

Aspex Portsmouth is free to visit and donations are warmly welcomed. You can find out more about the gallery and plan a visit by heading to: aspex.org.uk.

In Touch, In Ruin
25 July - 12 October 2025

In Touch, In Ruin presents an immersive new exhibition that merges cutting-edge technology and experimental art to explore themes of memory, placemaking, and local heritage. In this exhibition, local heritage is echoed through whispers, dreams and refractions of light.

Three emerging visual artists: Hannah Buckingham, Harry Payne, and James Wylie, delve into the archives of The Mary Rose, a sunken warship that has been resurfaced and is now preserved in a public museum.

This experience has culminated in an exploration of kinetic and embodied approaches to heritage, interrogating how stories unravel depending on who they are held by, how they are preserved, and to whom they are addressed.

By closely studying preserved objects in a museum setting, the artists have used that as inspiration to create new works that respond to ideas of intangible heritage, preservation, boundaries, sustainability, and embodiment. These intersect through and within boundaries that are formed and broken within the limitations of human handling, questioning whether heritage can ever be presented without transformation.

In using new technologies, the artists have found ways to demystify heritage and the medium; making history more accessible and embodied, and presenting technology as a resource that is very much embedded in the natural world. Through sensory-driven "memory installations" the artists animate collected histories; lost stories, secrets, and lingering messages; woven into objects that reimagine our relationship with the past. Engaging in new technologies, their practices revive archives with intimate, physical resonance, inviting audiences to feel heritage rather than simply observe it.

This exhibition is the culmination of Resonate, a developmental programme produced and led by Thomas Buckley that supports Portsmouth-based artists in enhancing their technical skills and exploring the intersection of physical and digital realms within their practices.

Stories Held
23 July - 19 October 2025

Stories Held presents a collection of ceramics by Portsmouth-based artist Hollie Thornley.

Thornley's ceramic practice begins with the ground beneath her feet. She forages clay from the local landscape, an act of excavation and close observation that lets the material reveal its origins. This intuitive process responds to the land and its fragments, transforming weathered traces of nature and human activity into quiet prompts for making.

Using ancient hand-building techniques such as pinching and coiling, Thornley allows each vessel to grow slowly and organically. Every form is shaped by touch and memory, with visible marks registering time, pressure, and pause. The surface bears the history of its making, embedded in the clay.

Central to Thornley's approach is the deep connection between material and place. Natural fragments, such as stones and shells, are often pressed into the clay or shape its irregular, earthy forms. These vessels reflect both landscape and human presence – not as polished artifacts but as quiet offerings or vessels of transition. They explore how stories are held within objects, preserved and transformed over time through touch and making.

Thornley's tactile storytelling deepens this dialogue, enriching conversations about material, memory, and the ongoing relationship between place and making.

Interwoven throughout her work are themes of ruin and repair, expressed in a sensitivity to what is broken, buried, or overlooked. Her ceramics are intimate gestures, small acts honouring connections between people, place, and what remains. At times, the vessels take on a devotional quality – ephemeral shrines holding traces of the artist's own experience and sense of self.

Through this close relationship with the land and its remnants, Thornley invites us to reconsider the practice of preservation – not as fixing, but as ongoing attention.