Riverside Artists Group Marks Four Decades with Major Exhibition
Pull Focus to be curated by Dr Katharine Meynell
The displays trace the group's history back to the eighties
February 23, 2026
Riverside Artists Group will mark four decades of activity with a major exhibition at Riverside Studios this spring, opening a retrospective that brings together work, memorabilia and film from across the group’s history.
Pull Focus, curated by Dr Katharine Meynell, runs from 17 March to 3 May in the studios’ public spaces and promises to be both a celebration and a reappraisal of a group that began at Riverside in 1986 and has continued to show regularly in London and internationally.
The exhibition is drawn from the work of 34 current members and spans past and present eras, presenting a cohesive yet deeply personal vision of the group’s evolving identity. “PULL FOCUS brings the 40 year history of Riverside Artists Group (RAG), unique amongst London art groups, into sharper clarity,” the organisers say, and the show will include an archive wall of photographs, original artworks and other artefacts that trace RAG’s journey from an informal association of West London artists to its established position today.
The programme includes a launch party on Thursday 19 March, a film premiere on Sunday 29 March and artists’ talks that same afternoon and early evening, all of which are free to attend.
A highlight of the weekend of 29 March will be the premiere of Tracing the River, a compilation of rare footage from the group’s 1988 trip to Russia, edited by filmmaker Angela Elvira Bruce, followed by a session in the River Room where visitors can hear directly from the artists. The film will screen in Cinema 2 at 2.30pm, with artists’ talks in the River Room from 4pm to 6pm, and that all visitors to Riverside Studios are invited to attend and to hear the stories behind the work.
Dr Katharine Meynell, who curated the show, is an artist, scholar and author whose practice ranges across artists’ books, video installations, performances and drawings; her curatorial approach emphasises collaborative ventures and the idea of works existing within a shared milieu rather than as isolated objects. Angela Elvira Bruce, who compiled the film material, is an independent filmmaker and ethnographer with a background in arts and performance film, whose credits include award-winning documentaries and work for the BBC and Time Out.
The exhibition will feature work by a wide cross-section of RAG members, from founding figures to newer practitioners, and the group remains a not-for-profit organisation with an active online presence; sales enquiries are handled directly through the Riverside Artists Group website.
The organisers frame Pull Focus as a return to the Riverside Studios, the venue that originally hosted the group.
The exhibition is free, open daily from 7.30am to 11pm.
Artists Exhibiting: (Original members in bold) Mike Abrahams, Susan Bazin, Lynne Beel , Peter Blegvad, Natalia Bobrova, G Calvert , Jim Cox, Grazyna Cydzik, Emma Davis, Brian Deighton , Josie Deighton, Shona Elrick, Chloe Fremantle, Máire Gartland, Saadeh-Byreet George, Sarah Granville, Aude Grasset, Janey Hagger, Diana Hare, Martin Ireland, Buffy Kimm, James Lawson, Marianne Moore, Jane Oldfield, John Potter, Felicity Swan, Jules A Sykes, Celia Toler, Jan Urbanski, Astrite Vula, Greta Wakil, Miles Watson, Stephen Williams.
RAG is a not-for-profit organisation. For sales of work, individual artists can be contacted through its website.
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