South, London
George Rouy
Reprise
Hannah BarryThe title of the show Reprise comes from the Old French reprendre (“to take up again” or “resume”). Continuing his episodic approach to exhibition-making, Rouy uses the term to revisit and expand recurring ideas within his practice, the pluralized body in states of transformation, reconstruction, reformation and becoming. Across these works, repetition is not treated as sameness, but as a process through which difference and change emerge. In contemporary culture, reprise is no longer only a musical or performative repeat. Repetition is a propulsive strategy for navigating information overload, nostalgia and digital memory. The reprise — the return of a theme, image or gesture through variation — shapes how identity is performed, how media is consumed and how history is processed. Through loops, sampling, and continual reworking, images, gestures and meaning return in altered and refreshed forms. Rouy approaches painting in a similar way: recurring motifs, symbols and compositions become sites of instability, renewal, and reinvention. This is George Rouy’s fourth solo exhibition at the gallery since 2017. George Rouy (b. 1994, Sittingbourne, Kent, UK. Lives and works in Faversham, UK). Rouy’s work is held in museum collections including Musée d'Art Moderne de Paris, Paris, FR; The Albertina Museum, Vienna, AT; Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain, Paris, FR; Stahl Collection, Norrkoping, SE; SFMoMA, San Francisco, US; LACMA, Los Angeles, US; Phoenix Art Museum, Phoenix, US; Berkeley Museum of Art, Berkeley, US; M Woods, Beijing, CN; Sifang Art Museum, Nanjing, CN. Recent exhibitions and projects have included Presence in Form, Conciliazione5, Vatican City, VA (2026); Shadowing, Château de Boisgeloup, Fundación Almine y Bernard Ruiz-Picasso, Gisors, FR (2025); Bodysuit, a 45-minute live performance created with choreographer Sharon Eyal, London, UK and Los Angeles, US (2023-2025); The Witness, made in response to The Massacre at Chios by Eugène Delacroix, an invitation from the Musée du Louvre and Centre Pompidou-Metz, FR (2025).