Artist: Melissa Joseph

Sim Smith presents two solo exhibitions for London Gallery Weekend 2026, Heft by New York based artist Melissa Joseph and A Thin Place by British sculptor Max Bainbridge.

Heft is Joseph’s first large-scale exhibition in the UK, created in response to her research following sheep across Scotland. In this exhibition Joseph draws on her Indian-American upbringing to illustrate a resonant parallel between animal instinct and human migration, beginning with how ewes pass down vital spatial knowledge to their lambs, an inherited understanding of where to gather, move, and remain without the need for fences. When disease or loss interrupts this lineage, that knowledge fractures, leaving the flock disoriented. Joseph uses this phenomenon as a lens to explore diaspora, where displacement disrupts the transmission of cultural, emotional, and epigenetic memory. She reflects on how first and second-generation communities are often left to reconstruct a broken code, piecing together belonging, identity, and survival in unfamiliar landscapes. The exhibition will see ambitious large scale felted works created from Scottish fleece as well as parts of the landscape encapsulated as part of the exhibition.