Acts of Attention Makes Its Public Debut at Saatchi Gallery
24–27 September 2026 · Exhibition · Spotlight: Digitalism, British Art Fair · Saatchi Gallery, London
Six works from my ongoing project Acts of Attention made their public exhibition debut at Saatchi Gallery, London, as part of Spotlight: Digitalism at British Art Fair 2026.
Running from 24–27 September, British Art Fair occupied Saatchi Gallery with presentations spanning Modern and Contemporary British art. On the second floor, Spotlight: Digitalism brought together artists working across photography, AI, AR, VR, moving image, digital sculpture, painting and other technologically mediated practices. The section was produced and curated by Rebekah Tolley, and considered how digital technologies have become part of the wider cultural environment through which contemporary art is now made and experienced. Saatchi Gallery »
I presented seven works at Stand D2: six photographs from Acts of Attention — Drawn Line, Covered Chairs, Break Free, Blind Landscape, Floral Arrangement and Under Strain — alongside Colour Divides, winner of the Object category in the Open Competition at the 2026 Sony World Photography Awards. The British Art Fair’s official Digitalism programme included my work alongside a broad international group of artists responding to the changing relationship between art and technology. British Art Fair
The exhibition marked an important stage in the development of Acts of Attention. Made entirely using a mobile phone, the project begins from the belief that attention is not passive. It focuses on overlooked objects, surfaces, traces and temporary situations, asking what becomes visible when we remain with ordinary things long enough for their meaning to begin to shift.
Presenting the series within Digitalism felt particularly appropriate. The mobile phone is both the defining image making device of contemporary life and a technology closely associated with speed, distraction and the constant circulation of images. Acts of Attention uses that same device differently: as a means of slowing down, looking closely and questioning persistent hierarchies around photographic equipment and artistic value.
Alongside the series, Colour Divides returned to public display in London for the first time since the Sony World Photography Awards exhibition at Somerset House. The work shown at Saatchi Gallery was the same original exhibition print produced for Somerset House, placing two interconnected strands of my practice together: a photograph whose journey has challenged assumptions around mobile photography on an international scale, and a developing project that makes those questions part of its conceptual framework.
The response to Acts of Attention throughout the fair was particularly encouraging. Conversations with visitors, artists, curators, gallerists and collectors repeatedly returned to the ordinary subjects within the photographs and to the role of the mobile phone in making them. For a project concerned fundamentally with what we choose to notice, having those conversations around the work itself felt like an important extension of the project beyond the images.
Spotlight: Digitalism formed part of a wider 2026 British Art Fair programme spanning twentieth century British art through to emerging contemporary practices. The fair describes Digitalism as a space for artists pushing the boundaries of contemporary art through technology and as part of a longer history of technologically mediated art rather than a phenomenon beginning with AI. British Art Fair
The exhibition was both the first public presentation of Acts of Attention and an important opportunity to begin seeing how the project operates when individual photographs move from the mobile screen into the physical space of an exhibition.
Spotlight: Digitalism — British Art Fair 2026
British Art Fair 2026 at Saatchi Gallery
Digitalism: A History Hiding in Plain Sight — Rebekah Tolley
