Inherent Vice

Opening Night: Thursday 30 July 2026, 6 – 9pm

Inherent Vice is curated by NAS alum and staff member Amelia Skelton, with curatorial support from Dr Elizabeth Pulie. 

Inherent Vice brings together a diverse group of artists whose practices are drawn to materials that resist stability, permanence and control. Borrowing its title from John Barbour’s Inherent Vice (2005 – 06), the exhibition plays on the conservation term used to describe an object’s tendency to deteriorate from within, while also suggesting the unruly pleasures, flaws and temptations embedded in material practice.

Through works that stain, sag, fray, bulge, collapse, fade or refuse to behave, the exhibition foregrounds textiles and other unstable materials as active, provocative forces. Across varied approaches, Inherent Vice celebrates artists who embrace vulnerability, excess and material disobedience, opening up experimental ways of making, thinking and holding together.

Third Space will be open for the duration of the exhibition from 11am – 5pm, Monday to Friday.