Regency Town House
Sam Kaufman presents a film and installation based around his work Pseudomorphs (2026) is a film about cephalopods, doubling bodies, institutional friction, hypnosis and disappearance. It is staged across three locations: a marine biology laboratory studying cephalopod cognition and skin camouflage; a beach home to giant ammonite fossils; and the mesopelagic zone of the sea. The film takes the pseudomorph as its starting point – a decoy ink body created by cuttlefish, squid and octopuses – to think through disparate instances where the body’s boundary against the world becomes unstable and altered. It is narrated through multiple voices: interview fragments, email correspondence, and out-of-body experiences.
Holly Birtles As part of the Chennai Photo Biennial X Photoworks Darkroom Residency, Holly Birtles developed a series titled Fighting Fish. Reflecting on an ongoing body of work inspired by the Thames River London and Estuary in Kent, Essex and Suffolk, where performers and artists contemplate their choreographed roles as ‘Thames Monsters; in Chennai, India, Birtles responded to the Adyar and Cooum river, identifying parallels linked to sentimentality, dedication, care, and destruction. This exhibition of largescale darkroom prints and ai collaborations recontextualises image generator methodologies to examine speculative ecological struggles through both the material and the digital.
