TOTEMS FOR TROUBLING TIMES - A RESIDENCY, RITUAL AND SHOW
This October, artist collective Room to Manoeuvre (RTM) will take over Grow’s ground-floor project space for an evolving #DIYRESIDENCY, culminating in a weekend of exhibitions, open studios, music and activity as part of Plymouth Art Weekender 2026.
Room to Manoeuvre comprises multidisciplinary artists Claire Gladstone, Shelley Hodgson and Tina Kutter. Throughout the residency, they will use the project space to develop Totems for Troubling Times, working alongside and bringing together work by 20 invited guest artists.
Totems for Troubling Times
Totems for Troubling Times explores the complex relationships between belief, value and exchange.
The artists are bringing together sculptural installations, assemblages, wall-based and free-standing works, and objects that function as contemporary reliquaries, vending systems, altars and shrines.
Moving between the sacred and transactional, sincere and absurd, everyday and extraordinary, the project uses humour, spectacle and unease to consider how objects acquire meaning and value, and what we choose to believe in, preserve, exchange or give authority to.
Rather than arriving at Grow as a finished exhibition, the project will develop throughout the residency. Works will arrive, be made and installed, move around the space and be brought into conversation with one another.
Visitors will have opportunities to encounter that process and see the exhibition taking shape.
Participating Artists
Totems for Troubling Times is led by Room to Manoeuvre (RTM) - multidisciplinary artists Claire Gladstone, Shelley Hodgson and Tina Kutter, working alongside invited guest artists, including:
Keith Frake
Layla Lyons
The residency culminates during Plymouth Art Weekender, 16–18 October 2026, when we'll be opening up more of the building for a weekend of open studios.
EVENTS
Friday 16 October | 5.30–8.30pm
Ritual Celebration: Totems for Troubling Times + Bar & Music
Join Room to Manoeuvre for a Ritual Celebration marking the culmination of the residency and the beginning of Plymouth Art Weekender at Grow.
Come along, encounter the work, meet some of the artists and see how Totems for Troubling Times has evolved during its time in the space, then stay on for drinks at the bar and music.
Saturday 17 + Sunday 18 October | 11am–4pm
Totems for Troubling Times + Grow Plymouth Open Studios
Across Saturday and Sunday, Totems for Troubling Times continues in the ground-floor project space while we also open the doors to the working artist studios (Between 11am-3pm)
Head upstairs to meet our studio holders, explore their working spaces, see works in progress and discover some of the different creative practices happening across the building.
About #DIYRESIDENCIES
Grow Plymouth’s #DIYRESIDENCIES give artists and collectives space to experiment, develop work and test new ideas.
Rather than requiring artists to arrive with a finished exhibition, the project space can become a place for making, trying things out, collaborating and sharing work as it develops.
Room to Manoeuvre’s residency continues that approach, with the space itself becoming part studio, part exhibition and part gathering place over the course of October.