In Co-Creating Wandsworth which took place across May and June at the Nex, Nova Ma’s interdisciplinary practice as an emerging curator and ceramic artist unfolds as a tender dialogue between material history, cultural memory, and collective autonomy. Bridging the gaps between fine art, place, and public, Ma’s work celebrates the possibilities born from collaboration, where creativity is inseparable from listening.
Working with co-curator Kevin Haley, Ma frames a process of co-production, inviting Wandsworth’s residents to reimagine their borough. Her curatorial approach treats dialogue as a creative act, using workshops and panel discussions to amplify collective voices on safety, accessibility, and cultural memory. The gallery becomes a civic space—a contact zone where art and community come together to reflect on urban transformation. These encounters were not only a prelude but embedded in the work itself, leaving tangible traces of shared ideas and gestures throughout the exhibition.
By the windows facing the streets of Wandsworth, Ma’s ceramic pieces contemplate on material history and the idea of home. Here, memory is held in the discarded: fragments of wood laminate, broken tiles, and flaking wallpaper salvaged from local shops, restaurants, and council flats are pressed into clay and fired into quiet relics of the borough’s life. Each piece becomes both artefact and metaphor, reconstructing the mundane and overlooked through care.
The exhibition space resonates with layered dialogue. Visible Voices by Sam Joseph forms a constellation of black-and-white photographs capturing gestures of communal life —hands sketching, notes scrawled, fleeting exchanges. Nearby, Joseph’s (In)Visible weaves photography, film, and text to narrate stories of heritage and identity often left unspoken. Across the room, Donho Cho’s mixed-media sculptures, assembled from found objects and discarded furniture, bring vibrancy of the streets into the static space.
Traces of collective making can be found throughout: Reimagining Wandsworth After Dark, a zine emerging from workshops on the borough’s nocturnal life, navigates tensions between safety and solitude, visibility and absence; Echoes of Industry, a series of mixed media sculptures created in a local shopping centre, explores the area’s industrial heritage through sustainable materials and community participation; and Tactile Memory presents works where participants engaged with local environments through clay and found objects.
What ties these works together is a commitment to inclusivity and communal care. The exhibition rejects polished conclusions, embracing the process and shared agency, and invites viewers to imagine the borough as an ever-evolving collaboration between people and place. Rooted in public engagement, it fosters reflection on belonging:
What does safety mean in public space? How can accessibility shape a community? Such questions resonate through the installations, evidence of an exhibition not just for a community, but with it.
Across her curatorial and ceramic practice, Ma creates encounters rather than displays. Her work reminds us that memory is a shared construction, and belonging emerges not only in grand gestures but in small, tactile exchanges between people and place. Through her practice, fragments become monuments, and art becomes a language of care, collaboration, and continuity.
