I’m really happy to be able to share that this Autumn I was part of Highs and Lows, Like Everything in Life, an exhibition at Moving Gallery in Sunderland from 14–20 September 2026.
The exhibition brought together work by myself, and fellow Northeast-based artists and STRIKE collective members Maria Cooper and Nocciola the Drawer (Hazel Oakes). Across ceramics, textiles, illustration, painting and mixed media, we explored the small, everyday moments that shape how we feel, remember and make sense of our lives.
Photo credit @designbykinship (click on images to scroll through)
What the exhibition meant to me
Putting this work together made me think a lot about the things that stay with us. Not necessarily the big, obvious events, but the quieter things: an object kept for years, a repeated routine, a colour that reminds you of somewhere, a passing thought, or a moment of joy that arrives when you least expect it.
I’m often drawn to the familiar through a quirky personal lens. I like noticing the details that might otherwise be overlooked, and trying to give them a little more space or attention. In making work for this exhibition, I found myself thinking about how memories are never fully fixed and how each moment is changing and developing into the next. They also can change each time we return to them, becoming softer, stranger, funnier, sadder or more hopeful depending on where we are in our lives.
That felt important to me. The exhibition was not about presenting life as neatly resolved or uncomplicated. It was about holding space for contradiction: for happiness alongside uncertainty, comfort alongside longing, and change alongside loss.
My work in the show
My own work explored these ideas through painting and ceramics. I was interested in creating pieces that felt personal, but not overly literal; work that could hold a feeling or memory without explaining it completely, leaving space for interpretation of the viewer.
As typical of my practice, I wanted my pieces in the exhibition to have a sense of warmth and playfulness, while also creating room for quieter, more tender emotions. Pattern, colour, texture and imperfection became ways of thinking about how experience accumulates: how small marks, repeated gestures and everyday objects can gradually become part of a bigger story.
Life is tough but so am I, 2025.
For me, making is often a way of slowing down. It gives me a reason to pay attention to things I might otherwise rush past. This exhibition felt like an extension of that: an invitation to notice what is already around us, and to recognise that even ordinary moments can carry meaning.
Showing with Maria and Hazel
One of the loveliest parts of the exhibition was seeing my work alongside Maria’s and Hazel’s. We have been, and still are, working on a larger project together and although we each have our own visual language and ways of working, there is a real connection between our practices. Finally having pieces from each of us displayed together provided a long anticipated goal for us and provided tactile evidence for our long term ambition.
Maria and Hazel both brought something different to the space, and together the work created a conversation about memory, colour, humour, tenderness and the textures of everyday life. It felt special to exhibit with artists I admire, and to see how our individual perspectives could sit alongside one another while still feeling part of a shared whole.
Hazel, as Nocciola the Drawer, made bold, colourful illustrative tiled mural and sculptural works that celebrates and uplifts, often combining female characters with energetic pattern and colour. Seeing her work in the gallery alongside Maria Cooper’s sensitive, humorous and nostalgic textiles, made the exhibition feel alive and varied, while still rooted in the same interest in lived experience.
Highs and lows
The title of the exhibition stayed with me throughout the process. Highs and Lows, Like Everything in Life felt honest because life is rarely one thing at a time. A good day can contain sadness. A difficult period can hold moments of beauty. Memories can be comforting and painful at once.
I think that is why I keep returning to everyday imagery and familiar forms within my work, be it a stray cat, a childhood wendy house or a patch of daisies growing on the lawn. They give me a way to explore complicated feelings without needing to make them too tidy or certain. There is comfort in recognising something, but there is also possibility in seeing it differently.
Fruity Flowers, 2026.
I hope anyone who visited the exhibition left with a sense that the small things matter: the marks, objects, gestures and memories that make up our days. For me, that is where a lot of the meaning lives.
Thank you to everyone who came to see the exhibition, spoke to us about the work, and supported the show. It was a real pleasure to share the space with Maria and Hazel, and to see our work together at Moving Gallery.
You can see more of my work here at www.ruthflowers.co.uk, and follow Maria and Hazel at @from.cooper.studio and @nocciolathedrawer.