Commissions
AEE x Freelands Foundation 2025/2026
This research commission responds to the urgent lack of representation of Black and Brown students engaged in fine Art pathways within secondary schools, highlighted in the Visualise Report. In Thanet—a predominantly White region—this imbalance is compounded by local data from Kent Police and Kent County Council, which evidences ongoing racial inequality and discrimination-related incidents in schools.
The project asserts the need for anti-racist education within largely monocultural contexts. Bringing artist Cherelle Sappleton and Art Teacher Petra Matthews-Crow together in a cross-sector partnership, the commission aims to explore how the visual arts can challenge structural inequities and support more inclusive practices.
Over 18 months, the two will meet regularly to experiment, make, and reflect- generating knowledge that is embodied, material, relational, and theoretical. This process centres on exchange and critical dialogue, with the aim of translating insights back into learning environments.
Cement Fields
2024/2025
Taking inspiration from water as a source and site of relaxation, artist and sound therapist Cherelle Sappleton, alongside record producer and sound designer Tom Morris, are working with young people at schools in North Kent to explore meditative sound practices and consider their impact on mental health.
By incorporating immersive ‘sound baths’ which invite students to engage with the sound, resonance, and movement of water, the programme uses water to ask how experimental sound practices might be used to create moments of calm and relaxation, while also opening up reflection on the different associations people have with water.
Still Waters was conceived as an ongoing process of learning and exchange to help young people consider their relationship to water (including their local waterways), and to explore its possibilities as a site of calm and decompression.
The project extended into 2025 to deepen relationships with one of the North Kent schools, facilitating the co-creation of a soundscape presented for public exhibition in Spring/Summer 2025.
Utopia/ Dystopia 2022
Commissioned by V&A East x Gal-Dem Magazine in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, the commission explores and responds to personal experiences during the UK lockdowns.
Queen Elizabeth Park, London
Hospital Rooms 2021
A commission to create new artwork for an area in Titian Ward, a men’s psychiatric intensive care unit.
SCAN/EXCHANGE
Sappleton’s practice draws on found imagery, shaped by an ongoing response to the lack of representation of women of colour and other racialised groups within fashion and lifestyle magazines that once formed her primary source material. This gap led to Scan/Exchange (2017), an evolving project rooted in collaboration and the sharing of personal archives.
Working with images contributed by individuals from diverse backgrounds, the project both informs her artistic process and supports the preservation of family-held visual histories for future generations.
Through commissions with communities connected to institutions such as Great Ormond Street Hospital, the National Trust’s Sutton House, and South London Gallery, the project continues to evolve, adapting its approach to each context.
For a fuller description and images, visit the Scan/Exchange page.
Great Ormond Street Hospital 2022
GOSH Arts sought a new artwork to be created for the hospital staff to mark their extraordinary efforts and sacrifices during the Covid-19 Pandemic. Through staging Scan/Exchange events with members and calling out for physical and digital submissions, Cherelle created ‘Light blue… clouds parted’, a 9-meter wallpaper and window installation for the Lagoon staff area within the hospital.
SLG Big Family Press
2019
In Autumn 2019, Cherelle worked with South London Gallery’s Big Family Press on a series of collaborative workshops centred on creative explorations of shared identities and histories.
Over 14 weeks, children from Oliver Goldsmith Primary School Camberwell, worked with Cherelle and the SLG team in regular after-school sessions. Together, they developed a collage library of personal and familiar imagery to be used collectively by the group in creative workshops.
The workshops acted as a catalyst for conversation about our shared or differentiated experiences, our family histories and our memories. Cherelle’s Big Family Press commission was built on her long-term research project Scan/Exchange, which draws on the personal archives of people of colour to use as collage material and instigate preservation for future generations.
From September to December 2019, the Big Family Press was: Abdi, Ben, Cherelle, Daniel, Davinia, Esther, Ethan, Jenny, Jemimah, Kamil, Liesl, Lily, Rahmaa, Tilewa and Zahraa.
National Trust 2019
A commission to produce new artwork for Sutton House, London in response to a report produced by artist, producer and filmmaker Michele d’Acosta, for the National Trust that explored black women’s empowerment in 2018, the centenary anniversary suffrage. Sappleton initiated a project called Scan/Exchange in 2017 which aims to digitise personal archives belonging to women of colour. Sappleton used the commission as an opportunity to engage with women connected to Hackney or Sutton House and collect images to be used in the creation of this new body of work. This show explores and responds to the testimonies contained in the report, the scanned photographs donated to the artist, the dynamic history of the house as well as her own British, Jamaican and Dominican heritage.
