Souvenir

9 January – 8 February 2026

The first exhibition by Fitzrovia Chapel’s  inaugural Curators-in-Residence – the award-winning artists and BAFTA-nominated filmmakers Iain Forsyth & Jane Pollard.

Drawing on strategies of filmmaking and storytelling and pulling from literature, performance, music, visual arts, craft and design, Souvenir is the first in a trilogy of exhibitions that the duo will curate throughout 2026 in the Chapel’s glimmering and profound interior – an enchanting jewel of Byzantine-inspired architecture in the heart of London. The exhibition features Michael Bracewell, Sarah Nicolls, Matthew Healey and Sal Pittman.

At the heart of Souvenir is Michael Bracewell’s haunting eulogy to the London of the late 1970s and early 1980s; a city poised between the twilight of one era and the dawn of the newdigital era. With the novella as its touchstone, this singular exhibition will suspend visitors in an atmospheric state, harnessing the Chapel’s innate magical space as a kind of living keepsake – an architectural memory frozen momentarily outside of time and space. Passages from Bracewell’s vivid text will be brought to life as a recorded sound piece, voiced by actor Paul Kaye, who was a student at Harrow School of Art during the period the book is set. This is accompanied by a new composition from composer and piano inventor SarahNicolls created on her radically modified upright grand piano. Her celebrated Inside-Out Piano will be dramatically installed before the Chapel’s marble altar. Bristol-based artist Matthew Healey will reflect on the Chapel itself as a symbol of a vanishing London. Drawing on his expertise as a prop-maker, he is crafting a scale model of the Chapel as it stood after the demolition of the Middlesex Hospital – enshrined within an oversized snowglobe. Alongside this, the London-based artist and filmmaker Sal Pittman will bring her cinematic, site-responsive approach to the exhibition, designing a series of unique vignettes within the
audio environment.

Opening times:
11am to 6pm Monday – Saturday
Late night Thursday until 8pm
12pm to 5pm Sunday
Admission free