London’s newest alternative art space, The Free Will Prison, opens Beyond The Third Wave this week, bringing together 12 contemporary artists whose work confronts the fractured political and cultural landscape of post-Brexit, post-pandemic Britain.
Curated by Noah Powers, the exhibition examines how artists are responding to an era shaped by political instability, media saturation, economic uncertainty and the normalisation of crisis. Rather than offering direct protest, Beyond The Third Wave explores how images themselves have become contested sites where power, identity and meaning are constantly negotiated.
The exhibition brings together an intergenerational group of artists working across photomontage, collage, installation, public intervention and digital media. Highlights include politically charged works by Peter Kennard, whose photomontages have defined generations of British protest art, alongside the satirical collages of Cold War Steve, Spelling Mistakes Cost Lives and Melville the Third. Visitors will also encounter multimedia installations by Council Baby, Foka Wolf’s interventions into public space, billboard hacks by Pattern Up, Spice Bag and Wankers Of The World, immersive installations by Practicing Empathy in Mirrors, and new work by artist and activist Cat Phillipps, whose collaborative practice Kennardphillipps has produced some of the most recognisable political images of the past two decades.
Across the exhibition, familiar visual languages drawn from advertising, news media and consumer culture are dismantled and reassembled through humour, détournement and appropriation. The result is a body of work that reflects a Britain grappling with political fatigue, fractured identities and an uncertain future, while asking how contemporary image-making can still create space for critical reflection.
Positioning art as both a form of resistance and a means of questioning how narratives are constructed, Beyond The Third Wave highlights artists who continue to challenge dominant systems of representation through wit, disruption and visual invention.
Beyond The Third Wave, 7th–24th August 2026
The Free Will Prison
Private view on 6th August 6PM–10PM
