Florence Peake Vitalities at HOME Gallery, Manchester

HOME Gallery, Manchester announces a solo exhibition of sculptural and painting works by internationally acclaimed visual artist Florence Peake. Opening 10 Oct 2026 to 31 Jan 2027, Florence Peake:Vitalities brings together sculpture, drawing and live activation in an immersive installation shaped through collaboration, movement and embodied experience.

Respected for her queer approach and non-hierarchical process, Peake has worked with a multitude of collaborators and Vitalities is made in collaboration with LGBTQIA+ communities in and around Manchester. The installation includes works on paper, moulded and poured gypsum plaster, cast concrete, pewter and live performance interventions taking place fortnightly for the duration of the exhibition.

Vitalities is Peake’s first solo exhibition in the North West and is the culmination of 3 years of research and site-specific making that brings people together around loss and grief, through sculpture, movement and workshops.

“It’s great to be working with people in Manchester in this project where our experiences of grief can be worked with creatively, ritualistically and communally. I am interested in exploring queer grief – giving presence to experiences so often overlooked in mainstream society.” – Florence Peake 

Vitalities will be presented in the main gallery space at HOME where eight large luminescent sculptures made from plaster form key tenets throughout the exhibition. The sculptures have been created in carefully devised workshops with participants who have experience of grief – undertaking a process of reflection and catharsis. Made using traditional methods of casting in plaster, with Peake pouring plaster between participants, making solid the space between them.

The central space of the exhibition will be immersed in sanguine red. Suspended moulded set plaster works produced with membrane-like hessian, appear as husks, shells or figures metamorphosed into an upturned archaeological dig; an enigmatic psychological landscape that seems to defy the laws of physics.

In the same space, cast concrete dumbbells will be configured on the floor. Signifying the physicality of flesh, the corporeal, the reconfiguring of the body in menopause and the process of aging, the work suggests a reconciling of absence through surges of strength and resistance training.

“I have taken casting processes (in metal, plaster and concrete) to act as metaphors for loss, containment, and holding. I am thinking of how spaces for loss can become vital spaces.” – Florence Peake

This duality between absence and upsurge will continue in Peake’s chalk works on paper presented as double acts. Still life studies of immaterial spaces between held hands, are paired with drawings demonstrating gravitational or erupted motions; the dialogue between absence and existence in perpetual flux.

An enormous artwork made from vigorous markings, engraved into thick black paper covers a central floating wall. Produced and performed in private, the enigmatic forms are instinctual, appearing as remnants of ancient ritual or mark-making used to inscribe territory, scent or memory, encouraging us to think about time beyond our own.

Cyclical rhythms have been recurring themes throughout Peake’s work. For Vitalities there will be fortnightly live activations as dancers appear in the space, activating the exhibition with paint through gesture and movement, each time nuanced and totally unique.

Curator Clarissa Corfe, explained why she was excited to launch Vitalities at HOME:

“Peake has collaborated with individuals exploring queer grief – a subject often hidden or unacknowledged – on sculptures that form key tenets throughout. They are deeply intimate in exposing a topography of presence, loss and trace.

One of the most difficult and complex life experiences, this work deals with the vitality of what passes, what is left behind, reconciliation and resignation with the passage of time.”

Florence Peake Vitalities at HOME Gallery Manchester 10 Oct 2026 to 31 Jan 2027. Tickets are available here.