16/9/2026
After the Centre: The Invisible Forces of Our Time, hosted by London Art Collective (LAC), was held at the Bomb Factory Marylebone in London from September 14 to 18, 2026 as a special project of London Design Festival 2026. The exhibition bringing together the paintings, sculptures, images and installation works of 19 international artists to observe the influence forces in contemporary life that are difficult to be seen directly from different angles such as technology, body, memory, social structure and environment.
The exhibition try to find a new "center", and turns its attention away from the center - algorithms, data and artistic intelligence are reshaping the flow of information and attention; while memory, emotion, labor, social norms, space and viewing methods also affect us at a more daily and personal level.
Some artists respond directly to technology and information systems. Attention Capital in the Age of Surveillance Capital of Chongqing Hua focuses on monitoring how attention, identity and self-image under capitalism are continuously shaped by the digital system; Renwei Liu's Invisible Editorial tracks the "invisible" traces left by algorithm filtering and content auditing from the deleted, blurred and filtered information. Megan James combines archives, scanning technology and waste materials to think about how information is saved, classified and re endowed with meaning through the collection, recording and re organisation of objects.
Body and viewing are also important clues for the exhibition. Jingyi Zhang's video works, Between Her and the Other, focus on the relationship between women's body and social gaze, and explore identity, physical experience and self cognition between the city and the ocean. In Nameless Owl, Daebie Kim intentionally removed the faces of religious figures, gave the initiative to watch to an owl looking directly at the audience, and reconsidered who was watching, who was watching, and who had the right to be represented.
Other artists respond to "invisible power" from a more perceptual and material level. Grace Margarita's Energy Flows, starting from Qi, meditation and the flow of energy between the body, space and nature, understands energy as a relationship of continuous circulation and change. Yue Zhou's Indoor Weather turns the climate from the natural environment to the living space and personal psychological state, and focuses on how housing pressure, space constraints and living costs gradually change people's lifestyle, and ultimately become the power to shape individual experience.
From consumption system to social gaze, the works in the exhibition show the influence mechanism on different scales. These forces sometimes come from the technical system, sometimes from social relations, and may also exist in memory, body and emotion. They may not always be visible, but they continue to participate in our understanding of the world.
After the Centre: The Invisible Forces of Our Time finally put forward an open question: how can we understand, respond to and reposition ourselves when we can't fully control the forces that shape us?
Albano Hernandez, Bas T. Hin, Chonghao Hua, Daebie Kim, Grace Margarita, Jie Zhu, Jingyi Zhang, Lucas Taberna, Megan James, Qintong Yu, Renwei Liu, Siuli-Mo Pal, Shiyi Liu, Tommy Camerno, Valentino Vannini, Vedika Rampal, Yangyi Fu, Yue Zhou, Zara Saba Saeed
14th September – 18th September 2026
Bomb Factory Marylebone, 206 Marylebone Road, London, NW1 6JQ
Chief Curator: Nelson Qin
Lead Curator: Chupei Yu