‘We Must Act’, instructs Sharon Hayes’ painted banner, whose title and content speak so eloquently to the current moment. The work holds an omission at its very centre – a space where the absence of the word ‘Women’ is outlined in faint pencil – ‘we [women] must act’. In a similar way, Kate Mosher Hall’s paintings use these gaps and voids in composition – torn curtains or Venetian blinds – to represent that which is framed by these absences.

At once ominous and playful, Elizabeth McIntosh’s painting entitled ‘Pattern’ is also broken open to reveal the blank white space beneath, like a relief between storm clouds. Her second work, ‘Elements’, explores the many ways that we longingly represent the sun in these dark days, using Bruno Munari as her guide. Antonio Ballester Moreno thrives in these differences, asserting that his paintings of suns are never the same. After all, it is always a different sun that we look at every day.

Jimmy Roberts’ new sculpture complicates the distinctions between image and space, revealing a contorted figure captured within a paper sculpture. The artwork engages and seeks to dissolve socially defined or culturally inscribed identities. Similarly, Esteban Jefferson’s ongoing consideration of the collection shown by the Petit Palais museum in Paris reflects on race, identity and the legacies of colonialism, questioning how institutions process uncomfortable histories.

'What messages might we already leave for the archaeologists of the future from their ancient past, before the doors to the future close?’ asks Studio For Propositional Cinema’s manifesto. Their off-set printing plate works echo Hayes’s initial call to action, adding an important caveat for consideration – 'IF THERE IS STILL ENOUGH TIME TO DO SO’.

But as Elif Saydam says of their contemplative Ottoman miniatures, there is the reassuring voice of hope and reflection in even the midst of the wildest tempest. In the end, this too shall pass, they say. But when it does, and the sky clears, “What kind of a world do we want to live in? And how do we want to live in it?”