Auto Italia presents Safety Curtain, a solo exhibition of newly commissioned works by UK-based artist Alex Margo Arden. Spanning painting, sculpture, photography, and installation, Safety Curtain recovers evidence of recent actions by climate activists in museums and art galleries, considering how such actions change the histories of the artworks they have interjected. The exhibition speaks to the long history of protests in which artefacts have been targeted, including direct action by the suffragettes between 1913 and 1914, along with the vandalism of plaster cast collections during the 1960s student protests. With a new wave of climate activism taking artworks as their aim, tensions between activists and cultural institutions have reemerged, raising questions of value, impact and access.

Arden’s practice often examines incidents of crime and punishment in the fields of culture and entertainment. Previous research projects have included a reconstructive endeavour relating to Kenneth Halliwell and Joe Orton’s collages on Islington Library books, and the recovery and reinterpretation of the Santa Fe Sheriff’s Office’s evidence in the Alec Baldwin Rust shooting incident. In her exhibition at Auto Italia, Arden uses theatrical methodologies of staging and reproduction to explore material tensions between protest actions and protections around them, including the role of a safety curtain in theatres, and the protective glass installed over paintings in art museums. Safety Curtain reinterprets actions and images relating to the defacement, conservation and restoration of art, considering how restorative processes that erase the effects of time on artefacts might also conceal their physical and political histories.

Safety Curtain includes the series Barricade (2024–25), comprising photographs of Arden’s backcloth painting of the same name hung in empty theatres, including the London Coliseum, Theatre Royal Drury Lane and the Royal Hippodrome Theatre. This work is juxtaposed with Cancelled Performance (2024–25), an installation on the gallery’s facade that references the cancellation of a performance of Les Misérables in London’s West End in 2023, following a mid-performance protest by climate activists. Composed of multiples of the same poster, the installation references the dissident practice of flyposting, featuring an overlaid addendum that the performance has been cancelled.

The exhibition also presents a series of new paintings by Arden: reproductions of renowned artworks after being the target of direct action by protestors. By transcribing the works with the residue of the protests integrated into their compositions, Arden rematerialises, restages and gives permanence to the material impact of these actions. Among these works are Scene [29 May 2022; Louvre, Paris] I (2024), Scene [14 October 2022; National Gallery, London] (2024), Scene [14 June 2023; National Museum, Stockholm] (2024).

The sculptural work Backstage Campaign (2025), composed of decommissioned art handling crates previously used to store part of the Royal Academy of Art’s cast collection, stages a behind-the-scenes look at museological practice and infrastructure. Populated with reclaimed ladders, condition reports, cleaning utensils and sprawling boxes of archival material, the crates serve as signifiers of invisible cultural labour and traces of political intervention.

Safety Curtain is commissioned and produced by Auto Italia, with support from Arts Council England and The Henry Moore Foundation.

Auto Italia’s commissions are made possible by our Exhibition Circle and Member supporters.

Alex Margo Arden (b. 1994, Croydon, UK) is an artist who lives and works in London. She uses theatrical methodologies to interrogate the production, interpretation, restoration and restaging of histories. Through her research projects, Arden often employs remaking and re-performance to question authority, authenticity, and labour. Recent solo exhibitions include Attention Restoration (2023) at Quench, Margate; Rock Paper Scissors (2023) at Royal Academy of Arts, London; Responsibility, Responsibility, Responsibility (2023) at Art-O-Rama, Marseille; All Clear (2022) at Ginny on Frederick, London; THE FARMYARD IS NOT A VIOLENT PLACE… (2020) at Cell Project Space, London. Recent group exhibitions include Recital (2024) at Arcadia Missa, London; On Feeling (2024) at The Approach, London; Color of Pomegranates (2024) at Gallery Artbeat, Tbilisi, Georgia; Vampire Problem? (2024) at N/A Gallery, Seoul; Rouge Ravager (2024) at Skandia Theatre, Stockholm; How to Destroy Angels (2024) at The Horse Hospital, London. Currently in her final year of study at the Royal Academy Schools, Arden previously graduated from Goldsmiths where she was awarded the Hamad Butt Memorial Prize.