I knock on your skin

A group exhibition at SET Woolwich, with featured works - Caught but never held, Flopped on frame and Ripple.

SET Woolwich, London, 2022

What is understood today as an ecology—or, rather, ecologies? How can they be defined, help us move beyond disciplinary boundaries, or enable us to re-negotiate interspecies coexistence? How might ecological thinking help us navigate crises?

Exploring these questions, ‘I knock on your skin’, a group show at SET Woolwich, mapped relationships between organisms and their environments through interconnectedness and interaction. The exhibition blended critical reflections on current socio-political shifts with explorations of shared exchanges on ecology. It invited us to consider new approaches to crises that might be playful, curious, or exploratory.

Maisie Maris’ selected pieces explored the tension between containment and freedom. They consider what it means to grasp something without possessing it, capturing moments or emotions that resist permanence. Maris’s work evokes a sense of spatial memory and speaks to the fragility of ecological and personal connections—relationships that are intertwined but remain untethered. Each piece invites viewers to reflect on holding something only briefly, to witness without claiming, and to exist within spaces that are shared but never fully possessed.