The Water Calls To Us — VSG Exhibition at The Local Air, Valencia
The Water Calls To Us opened on 18 February 2026 at The Local Air in Valencia — the first exhibition of Virtual Studio Groups artists in Spain, and a significant moment for a community that has, until now, existed almost entirely online.
Fifteen artists. Fifteen relationships with water. The breadth of that relationship is what strikes you first as you move through the space.
Seb Bradshaw's hanging lantern sculpture — its panels studded with hundreds of pale shells, its interior lit from within in luminous green — feels at once ancient and alive. It glows the way bioluminescent water glows: unsettling and beautiful in equal measure. The shells are water's deposits, accumulated slowly by time and tide. Bradshaw has made a reliquary of them.
On the adjacent wall, Yann Courte's photographs are arranged not in a grid but in a loosely clustered mosaic — images of shore, wave, and figure at the edge of the sea. There is a contemplative quality to the selection: someone standing alone where the land ends; close-up studies of sand and driftwood; the foamy edge of a wave retreating. These are images of attention, of someone watching water carefully.
Nearby, a set of small specimen frames arranged on a shelf holds sea-found objects — sea glass, pebbles, shells, fragments of net and weed — each displayed with the care of a natural history cabinet. Something about the scale of these works (intimate, almost private) next to Bradshaw's large illuminated sculpture creates an interesting tension between the monumental and the miniature.
Three framed collage works hang in sequence, layering photographic imagery with paint and mixed media. Figures appear to stand in or emerge from water, surrounded by colour fields of deep orange and blue. The exhibition's text, written by Seb Bradshaw, is mounted on the wall alongside a pair of headphones — an audio work, a collaborative piece between Bosko Begovic and River Reishi, that accompanies a bowl of sand placed on a table below. This meditative interactive installation invites visitors to take a moment in time, breathing while interacting with fine white sand from Valencia beach, while listening to the poem.
In the window display, landscape works hang pinned to a teal wall, visible from the street — an invitation rather than a boundary.
The show ran through 28 February. The Water Calls To Us is curated from within the VSG community, with exhibition text by Seb Bradshaw (@artbyseb138).
Participating artists:
Bosko Begovic · Gordana Žikić · Sarah-Jane Mason · Kai Rennes · Patricia Chow · Raymond Watson · Ylva Eklöf · Theresa Wilshusen · Anna Likhina · Åsa Ekman · Louise Norström · Cassandra Stubbington · River Reishi · Seb Bradshaw · Yann Courte