Margate
CARL FREEDMAN GALLERY
On now
- Carl Freedman Gallery is proud to present Lures, a solo exhibition by Scottish-Iraqi artist Emii Alrai. Lures unfolds as a sculptural landscape shaped by excavation, myth and inherited memory. Alrai transforms the gallery into a shifting terrain, where fragments appear caught between ruin and reconstruction. Drawing on the aesthetics of archaeology and museology, her installations consider how objects become vessels for power, belief and cultural inheritance. The exhibition centres on the idea of the 'lure': an object that attracts, deceives or promises access to something beyond reach. Through vessels, architectural forms and sculptural interventions, Alrai explores the relationship between desire, geography and the body. Across the gallery, clay, steel and carved polystyrene form a landscape of partial monuments, reliquaries and speculative artefacts. Sculptures resembling unearthed vessels, carved landscapes and provisional structures operate as decoys, suggesting authenticity while revealing their constructed nature. Running throughout the exhibition is a tension between romance and violence, explored through heart burial, a practice particularly prevalent during the Crusades. Reserved largely for royalty, nobles and high-ranking figures, it involved the hearts of crusaders being preserved and returned from the Holy Land or elsewhere in Europe for burial at home, while others sent their hearts onwards to Jerusalem when unable to complete the journey themselves. These movements created a network of human remains crossing geographical and spiritual borders. Alrai is drawn to the allegorical charge of the heart as the imagined centre of desire and longing, physically attached to a desired place and forging connections to land through memory and devotion. Some vessel forms draw on Alrai’s research into the ornate containers used to house buried hearts, elevating human remains through ornamentation and care. Together, these elements create an environment where the past feels both present and fabricated, in which myth, memory and material evidence continually blur.Description
Lures Emii Alrai
Until 8 Nov 2026
Recent past exhibitions
- Carl Freedman Gallery is proud to present ‘Crossing Into Darkness’, a group exhibition curated by Dame Tracey Emin. Featuring works by David Altmejd, Georg Baselitz, Louise Bourgeois, Marlene Dumas, Tracey Emin, Laura Footes, Antony Gormley, Francisco Goya, Gilbert & George, Celia Hempton, Anselm Kiefer, Joline Kwakkenbos, Mark Manders, Danielle Mckinney, Lindsey Mendick, Juanita McNeely, Edvard Munch, Hermann Nitsch, Janice Nowinski, Anna Pakosz and Johnnie Shand Kydd. Crossing Into Darkness brings together a group of artists whose works confront the darkness inherent in human experience, not as something to be feared but as a necessary threshold toward renewal. In times marked by upheaval and uncertainty, this journey feels both universal and deeply personal. The title of the show is very self explanatory, especially for the times we are living in. But even so we have always had our own journeys. And I feel that we have to cross into darkness to find light. I’d like this show to be very emotionally immersive and people to feel the strength and vibrations within the works. I want people to know that art isn’t just something that you look at. That it has a deeper purpose and can penetrate all souls. I love the idea of people coming to Margate on the greyest of winter days with gale force winds and crashing waves to make the pilgrimage to see the show. – Dame Tracey EminDescription
Crossing Into Darkness
Ended 12 Apr 2026