We Are Where We Are, 2026

“What now? Each day seems to outdo the last. What felt unthinkable yesterday barely registers.”

Spanning 35 ceramic sculptures and several large-scale drawings, the exhibition brings together a body of work exploring how we are coping a quarter of the way through the 21st century – a time marked by psychological overload, acceleration and a pervasive sense of inertia.

This exhibition marks a 20-year relationship between Barford and David Gill Gallery, who have represented the artist since 2004. Barford last worked extensively with porcelain figurines between 2002 and 2011, a body of work through which he first became widely known. Returning to the medium after a 14-year hiatus felt significant.

“When I cut up and put figures together again, it feels like I am speaking a language I haven’t used in a long time. In that sense, it feels like coming home”

“I’m interested in apathy and impotence in the face of chaos, and in the quiet nihilism of just carrying on, being swept along by forces larger than yourself.”

Barford uses found porcelain figurines which he decapitates and reconfigures, assembling sprawling scenes that echo the moral panoramas of artists such as Pieter Brueghel the Elder, Hieronymus Bosch and William Hogarth. Darkly comic, the works bring humour and absurdity to today’s volatility.

Smaller tableau run throughout We Are Where We Are, compressing and exaggerating snapshots of contemporary life. These works operate as fragments, glimpses of behaviours, pressures and ways of carrying on. References span pharmaceuticals, online masculinity, conspiracy thinking and consumer habits, with details from everyday life in miniature: disposable vapes, crisp packets and Greggs sausage rolls permeating the exhibition.

Barford chose the title We Are Where We Are because he disliked the phrase and its undertones of resignation and complacency. In It Is What It Is, figurines of protestors brandish similarly hollow slogans, reflecting a language saturated with statements that gesture towards action while often deflecting it.