Prem Sahib: Chamber review – master of unease twists the city into terror and pleasure
De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill There’s an atmosphere of sickly discomfort throughout this weird, intense mid-career survey for this brilliant artist Prem Sahib turns the city inside out, twists it around and rips it apart. His show at the De La Warr Pavilion in Bexhill, a sort of mid-career survey for the 44-year-old English artist, is full of private spaces and urban nightmares that have been gutted and left on…
Key points
- Prem Sahib's mid-career survey 'Chamber' runs at De La Warr Pavilion in Bexhill from 10 October 2026 to 3 January 2027.
- The exhibition uses inverted street lamps, puffer jackets in glass and resin panels to blur terror and intimacy.
- Queerness and erased spaces are central, with doors from a closed Mile End leather bar and a fountain from Chariots sauna.
Prem Sahib's mid-career survey, Chamber, is on view at the De La Warr Pavilion in Bexhill from 10 October 2026 to 3 January 2027. The 44-year-old English artist fills the galleries with private spaces and urban nightmares that have been gutted and left on display.
The show is minimal, claustrophobic and intense, built around an atmosphere of discomfort. A sodium street lamp hangs upside down, casting a sickly pale orange glow, while three puffer jackets are squeezed between sheets of glass.
Queerness and erased spaces
Queerness is central to Sahib's work. The double doors at the entrance came from a Mile End leather bar that closed in 2022, and a water fountain encased in resin is from Chariots sauna in Shoreditch, which closed in 2016.
In one resin panel, clear droplets have accumulated on black aluminium, like sweat on a nightclub wall. Two acrylic discs hung high nod to the visual results of rapid HIV tests, while a cracked obsidian mirror plays a slowed-down recording of a homophobic rant sent to Sahib on a gay chat room.
He’s been one of the most interesting artists working in this country for more than a decade now
— the Guardian reviewer
What the review says
The review describes Sahib as brilliant, with an incredible knack for crushingly intense minimalist atmospherics. It says he has been one of the most interesting artists working in this country for more than a decade, and that a big institutional show like this feels long overdue.
The review adds that not everything works. It calls the recording of Suella Braverman talking about the migrant crisis, heard while looking out at the sea, a bit on the nose, and says the little dotty horizon images add little.
