NICKI ROLLS
Richmond Lock & Weir, London. Threshold, collaborative exhibition with Astronaut Kawada Architecture + Habitat at their design studios, May - July 2025, based on 2-year residency at Northcote Nature Reserve.
Turner's House, Twickenham, London, Friends of Our Earth, 2024.
Dandelion drawing, charcoal on newspaper articles about climate, on the front of Turner's House as part of the exhibition in the garden. The exhibition was in response to the Turner and The Environment exhibition at Turner's House in 2024.
Nothing is Small in Nature, solo exhibition at ​One Paved Court, London, 2022
Carbon and Cellulose, solo exhibition at RuptureXIBIT, London, 2023
About/News
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Nicki Rolls is a contemporary artist based at Redlees Studios in Isleworth. Her drawings and paintings of wild flowers and weeds explore the fragility of the natural world. She has exhibited widely, both nationally and internationally. Her solo exhibitions include Carbon and Cellulose, RupturEXIBIT, Hampton Wick, 2023, Nothing is Small in Nature, One Paved Court, Richmond, 2022 and On and On, Concrete Cafe, Hayward Gallery, London, 2012. She was shortlisted for the Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize in 2023 and gained first prize (Student Award) at Jerwood Drawing Prize in 2011. She runs workshops with community groups has run life drawing workshops for many years. ​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​
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Solo Exhibitions
One Paved Court, London, Time & Tide, 3 - 28 Sept 2025
RuptureXIBIT, London, Carbon and Cellulose, 27 May - 1 June 2023
One Paved Court, London, Nothing is Small in Nature, Oct 19 - Nov 6 2022
Hayward Gallery's Concrete Cafe, London,On and On, 27 March - 3 June 2012
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Selected Collaborative and Group Exhibitions
​Astronaut Kawada, Richmond Lock and Weir, London, Threshold, May - July 2025​​​
Ham Library, London, Drawing on Ham Lands: Art & Interdependence, June 2025
Turner's House garden, Twickenham, London, Friends of Our Earth, 2024
Pensychnant Conservation Centre, Nature, Environment and Conservation, Conwy, Wales 2024
Trinity Buoy Wharf, London, Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize 2023
Redlees Gallery, London, Everything glowed with a gleam; Yet we were looking away!, 2023
Mall Galleries, London, Pastel Society of Annual Exhibition, 2023
Mall Galleries, London, Royal Society of British Artists Annual Exhibition, 2022
​Air Gallery, Altrincham, Manchester, Merry-Go-Round Broke Down, 2018
​Filter4, Basel, Switzerland, Searching the Line, 2017
Palazzo Flangini, Venice, Italy, Contemporary Venice 2016/7
A.P.T Gallery, London, Colliderscape, 2016
​Bargehouse, London, We all Draw @ UAL, 2015
Tate Britain, Late at Tate Britain 1840s GIF Party, 2014
Espacio Gallery, Bethnal Green Road, Second Nature, 2014
Jerwood Space, London, Jerwood Drawing Prize, 2011
Jerwood Space, London, Moving Image Awards Shortlist, 2007
St Pancras Church Crypt, London, Life cycles, 2007
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Education​​
University of the Arts London, Central Saint Martins College, BA Fine Art, 2005
University of the Arts London, Wimbledon College, MA Fine Art, 2011
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Residencies​
Northcote Nature Reserve: collaboration with Astronaut Kawada Architecture + Habitat, 2023 -2025
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Awards
Shortlisted for Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize, 2023
First Prize, Diana Armfield Drawing from Observation Award, London, 2023
First Prize Jerwood Drawing Prize, Student Award, 2011
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Current and Upcoming Exhibitions
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Time & Tide
One Paved Court, Richmond
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For the past two years, I have been working on an art residency on the tidal section of the River Crane and adjacent Northcote Nature reserve, making observations from the diverse habitats that envelop the river and nature reserve. Exploring wildflowers and weeds that live in inhospitable urban environments, I seek to celebrate these often overlooked and rejected plants, inviting the viewer to consider our human relationship with plants and the natural world. Time & Tide presents my charcoal drawings, paintings, sculpture, and video responding to my experience of both the river and its bordering plant life.
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Through large-scale charcoal drawings, I aim to capture the physical and emotional character of plants often dismissed as weeds. My charcoal drawings – marked by smudges, underdrawings, and fragile textures – render blemishes, broken stems, and decaying leaves, as a record of the stresses of living and ageing of the plant. I often include tangled roots and soil remnants, revealing the struggle for survival as both beautiful and vital.
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Using ink made from river water and local oak galls, linen buried under the riverbed and materials recovered from the river, I wish to infuse the work with the landscape’s physical presence. In depictions of plants that exist on its high embankments, I explore their precariousness, on the edge of survival and their dependence on the river. My paintings evoke the wildness and reprieve offered by this green corridor within the city, while reflecting on the precarious balance that sustains it.
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Time & Tide invites reflection on our relationship with nature, resilience in the face of environmental stress, and the urgency of the climate crisis. As the old adage warns, “Time and tide wait for no man” – how will we respond, before it’s too late?
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3 - 28 September, 2025
​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​The Power of Water
Embroidery Gallery, Sunbury
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11 artists consider water related impacts of climate change: from flooding to melting ice caps, rising river and sea levels and coastal erosion, the immense power of water is the subject of this exhibition at Sunbury Gallery, right next to the River Thames.
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5 January - 3 March, 2026