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A Celebration of Colour, Craft & Collaboration
Bankside Hotel and Contemporary Collective are delighted to welcome the work of British mixed-media artist Kelly Jenkins for a special, month-long showcase from 3–23 November 2025. During her residency, Jenkins will transform the Art Yard Studio into a vibrant, design-led space that celebrates colour, craftsmanship, and creative collaboration—featuring a unique partnership with interior design architects NM Design and furniture brand sofa.com.
This new residency marks Jenkins’ return to Bankside, following her acclaimed 2022 collaboration with the hotel. Known for her distinctive practice that bridges fine art, embroidery, and design, Jenkins transforms traditional craft into contemporary abstraction, exploring the expressive interplay between data, colour, form, and materiality.
Rooted in texture and playful process, Jenkins’ work explores how colour and pattern evoke emotion, balance, and joy. Drawing on landscapes, patterns, and data-led embroidery, she works across stitch, paint, and mixed media to create tactile pieces that blur the boundaries between fine art and interiors. Each artwork reflects her fascination with movement, material, and renewal, revealing how craft can embody resilience and reinvention.
At the heart of the showcase is a showstopping, hand-embroidered and painted furniture piece created in collaboration with NM Design and sofa.com. This bespoke armchair is a true fusion of art, craft, and contemporary design, embodying Bankside Hotel’s creative, design-led ethos and celebrating British craftsmanship at its finest.
Discussing her inspiration, Jenkins explains:
“The Armchair forms a continuous landscape, drawing inspiration from the artwork created during my original Bankside Residency in 2022 and my previous explorations of the River Thames, which flows around the entire piece. Rather than focusing on the urban stretches of the Thames, the design reflects the more suburban reaches of the river as it winds westward toward Richmond—an area of islands, wildlife, and painterly vistas immortalised by Turner in ‘The Thames from Richmond Hill’. My aim is to convey the Capital’s river in a quieter and more untamed character, resulting in a modern reimagining of Turner’s romantic view.”
Visitors to the Art Yard Studio can expect an uplifting, sensory experience, where colour, texture, and craftsmanship come alive through Jenkins’ bold textile and mixed-media works. The showcase will feature a curated selection of existing pieces alongside new design-led creations, limited-edition works, and art and design collaborations, with artworks available to collect and own from £400–£4,500.
About Kelly Jenkins:
Kelly Jenkins is an abstract painter and textile artist based in Hampshire, UK. The artist’s rare style is a symphony formed of painted landscape abstractions and embroidered geometric data visualisations on canvas, resulting in tactile, nuanced compositions that bridge the worlds of art, craft and psychology. These intense yet playful atmospheric plains are a reflection of contemporary culture, holding up a mirror to the emotional and physical frequencies of life. With grit, sass and positivity, Kelly’s work carries an arresting sense of levity. Her meticulously embroidered paintings emerge from an interplay between intention and chance, creating a state of equilibrium and harmony on canvas.
Stay Connected
Follow her journey via @Contemporary_Collective on Instagram.
Open House
Art Yard Maker’s Studio has an open-house policy, so if you‘re visiting our neighbourhood’s major art galleries, Southbank Centre, Tate Modern or Hayward Gallery why not stop by to see an artist at work.