LONDON’S ROYAL Over-Seas League (ROSL) will host Islands in the City, a major new group exhibition of contemporary Caribbean art, co-curated by Sherece Rainford and Louis Chapple.
Running from September 26 to November 9, 2025, the exhibition brings together over 20 leading and emerging artists across painting, sculpture, collage, photography, and mixed media.
At its heart, Islands in the City is a joyful assertion of Caribbean imagination and cultural pride. It explores the richness, resilience, and beauty of Caribbean identity through themes of diaspora, memory, migration, and self-determined creativity.
While Caribbean artists have long been central to shaping cultural expression, opportunities for their work to be commercially and critically elevated in major international centres have remained limited.
Islands in the City addresses this gap, presenting what is believed to be the most significant London showcase of contemporary Caribbean artists for sale to date.
The artists featured in the exhibition represent a constellation of Caribbean heritage, including the Bahamas, Dominica, Grenada, Guadeloupe, Jamaica, Montserrat, and Puerto Rico, as well as the wider Caribbean diaspora.
Their practices reflect the rootedness of island culture and the expansive possibilities of transatlantic migration and exchange.
“Caribbean art is one of the most dynamic and generative forces in contemporary culture,” says Sherece Rainford, Art Consultant, Founder of Gallery OCA, and a recognised expert in Caribbean art.
“This exhibition is not only a celebration of individual brilliance but also a collective statement about the accelerating momentum of Caribbean creativity on the world stage.
“The Caribbean has always been at the centre of cultural production, and today we are witnessing an exciting surge of recognition and opportunity in the art world. Islands in the City captures that energy, bringing a constellation of island futures into the very heart of London.”
Spanning generations, geographies, and mediums, the exhibition includes works by: Annis Harrison,, Carla Amour, Charmaine Watkiss, Eden Mullen, EVEWRIGHT, Ikesha Avo and many, many more.
The title, Islands in the City: A Constellation of Island Futures in the Centre of Empire, reflects how these artists collectively map cultural memory, political resilience, and speculative futures within the symbolic setting of Mayfair, once the epicentre of empire, now reimagined as a site of diasporic creativity.
