Holding Form: A Solo Exhibition by Ben Wakeling

About

Shaped by years spent working alongside NHS mental health services, Ben Wakeling’s practice reflects a close engagement with vulnerability, care, and the fragile structures that hold human experience together. These concerns occasionally surface within the paintings themselves, but more often inform the atmosphere in which the work develops.

Looking at Wakeling’s work is a two-fold act. First comes the shock of the image: clashing figures, fractured bodies, and dense layers of colour pressing against the surface. Then comes a slower moment of deciphering, of navigation. A hand or foot might offer a point of orientation from which clusters of bodies begin to separate - individual from individual or, as Wakeling’s titles sometimes suggest, self from self - hovering at the edge of legibility.

Wakeling approaches painting as a space of negotiation rather than resolution. Images surface gradually through layering and revision, with figures emerging briefly before dissolving back into the surrounding field of paint.

This sense of instability is central to his practice. Built through a dual approach that combines hesitant marks with more forceful gestures, the paintings remain open and provisional. Within this process, painting becomes a way of holding fragile states together. Just as care requires patience and sustained attention, Wakeling’s paintings hold form only temporarily, allowing images to remain unsettled and alive within the surface. In this sense, the act of painting becomes both a search and a form of care - an attempt to hold something together, if only for a moment.

Ben Wakeling (b.1985) is a London-based artist living and working in Hackney. Alongside his studio practice, he has spent a number of years working in close proximity to NHS mental health services, an experience that continues to shape the emotional and conceptual framework of his work. His paintings have been exhibited in group and solo presentations across the UK, including exhibitions at Saatchi Gallery, The Other Art Fair and V&A Hackney Wick.