Upstream Gallery will take part in the film programme of art fair Minor Attractions 2026, located at The Newman Hotel in London from 13-17 October. 

about minor attractions

Minor Attractions is a week-long art fair taking place in London, inviting global commercial galleries and not-for-profit art spaces, founded in 2023. The fair is designed as a space where art and nightlife meet, allowing the swells of international collectors in the city to mingle with the art workers and artists that make the art world tick. Galleries are encouraged to bring exciting and daring work, creating a new context for London’s buzzing art scene.

Upstream gallery will present two films: CLUB, 2025 by David Haines and Morpher, 2018-ongoing, by Kévin Bray.

about club by david haines

In this work, CLUB (2025) is not understood as a singular venue or physical location, but as a broader symbolic and affective space—an idea, a construct, and a container for collective memory, desire, and projection. CLUB functions here as a metaphor for queer sanctuary: a site where identity is performed and reimagined, where bodies gather not only to escape but to assert new possibilities of being. The work draws on research from the LGBT Historic Sites archive in New York, intersecting historical documentation with personal reflection.

about morpher by kévin bray 

At the center of Kévin Bray's art practice resides the video Morpher (2018-ongoing). Like a living organism, this video piece is continuously evolving, in addition to adapting to the spaces where it is displayed. It tells the story of a being in search of an identity, for itself as much as for the context of its own exploration.

Attempting to make a comment on the way we consume information and the limits of our understanding, Morpher questions what the borders of subjective and objective truth are and how these boundaries manifest themselves. Navigating through a reality that would be constructed only by humans for humans, the journey undertaken in this work becomes a shape shifting critical mirror of our language, information and data society. Drawing inspiration from philosophy, media literacy, narratology and symbolism, the different layers composing the video could have been overwhelming in its abundance, if it weren’t for Bray’s purposeful revealing of the compositions at play. Influencing the configuration of reality by montage and alienation, he recalls videos of ‘behind the scenes’ vfx breakdowns of Hollywood movies. Inviting us to be active agents within the developing processes at play; this specific exchange with the viewer is an appropriation of Bertolt Brecht’s ‘distancing effect’ in which familiar contents are presented in an unfamiliar way. This technique, used in both theatre and cinema, was conceived in order to provoke the audience to not be passive spectators lost within the narrative but rather, to be conscious critical observers.

Read more on the project here. 

 

Images:
1. Screenshot of film: CLUB, 2025 by David Haines.
2. Screenshot of film: Morpher, 2018-ongoing, by Kévin Bray.
3. Screenshot of film: CLUB, 2025 by David Haines.

 

Minor Attractions | The Newman Hotel
Fitzrovia (Central London), near Soho, Mayfair, and Marylebone.