RHODES has presented an array of exhibitions in 2025, from award-winning names to those making their UK debut. Read on to discover the story behind seven of our favourite exhibitions from the last year, and discover the artists and their works.
Elina Ojakangas: Those Moments After
Ojakangas’ RHODES debut invited viewers to reflect on identity and transformation through her surreal, exaggerated portraits. The soft curves of her figures flow in contrast to the sharp edges behind them, telling a larger story of growth, tension, and change. The interesting and angular forms reflect the emotional struggle within, and their representation in different exaggerated areas of the body.
Group exhibition: Story Time
Story Time featured four contemporary artists – Melody Tuttle, Genevieve Cohn, L. Song Wu, and Zoe Hawk. Their works spoke to each other in theme and narrative, creating a series that explored and exalted experiences of femininity and human connection. In their unique and personal ways, each artist created works that invited viewers into fantasy landscapes and girlhood experiences.
J. Carino Between: Garden and Wilderness
J. Carino’s solo exhibition was created as a response to ruminations on the intersection between queer identity and nature. With Carino himself very interested in flora and fauna, his series explored the place of queer people in the natural world and how, despite narratives that being LGBT+ is unnatural, nature itself is as queer as people are. RHODES Editions released a sell-out print edition alongside his solo exhibition, Lovers.
Opening in June, Passing Through was the UK debut solo exhibition for the Canadian artist. Based on his road trip across Scotland, Lynch’s series is created from snapshots and memories from his travels, focusing on his personal perspective in these landscapes. The tension between pixelation and nature is intentional – he is creating a new way of combining the two. Passing Through also coincided with his debut RHODES Editions print release, What Goes Up.
Morag Caister: Glimpses of a Sparkling World
Caister’s second solo exhibition at works featured five works across paper and canvas. They feature her iconic pared-back style, in which she uses considered strokes of colour to form bodies, filling the sofas and cushions they rest on with colour. This style expresses the intimacy between artist and sitter, and the suspension of her sitters in their own worlds when they’re painted.
Framed
The Spanish artist returned to RHODES in August with a new series, continuing his subversion of the boundary between digital and classical art. Lago recreates iconic portraits in oil, only to cover them up with colour or gold leaf, leaving only a swirl of the original still visible. These digitally-inspired windows into the past leave the viewer with a sense of how the two could work together and how Lago is forcing them to merge through his practice. Fake Abstract (Joseph Karl Steiler) was released as a gold-leaf print edition alongside the exhibition.
Koshiro Akiyama: Undercurrents
Akiyama made his solo debut at RHODES with Undercurrents, towards the end of the year. Across the exhibition ran themes of what goes on under the surface, with shadowy figures lurking in bodies of water or colourful forests. His medium inspired his subject, watercolour inks allowed to flow across the canvas with little manipulation from the artist, adding to the wild and unpredictable nature of the scenes he depicts.
