Tarka Kings: Mornings at the Lido

25 September – 24 October 2025, Offer Waterman

In her latest body of work, artist Tarka Kings turns her eye to the ritual of outdoor swimming, focusing on the Serpentine Lido in London’s Hyde Park — a place she swims most mornings. The result is Mornings at the Lido, a quietly absorbing exhibition of new drawings at Offer Waterman, on view from 25 September to 24 October.

This is Kings’ third solo show with the gallery, and it continues her long-standing exploration of water, the human body, and the city. Working almost exclusively in graphite and coloured pencil since 2008, she has developed a distinctive drawing technique built from countless fine marks, where light and colour seem to emerge gradually from the surface of the paper or panel. The effect is both precise and atmospheric.

For this series, Kings worked closely with a model, drawing from life and photographs to evoke the solitude and intimacy of wild swimming. The drawings hover somewhere between observation and memory — figures suspended in water, held in moments of quiet attention. Kings’ studio, now based on the Thames, further grounds this work in a daily relationship with the rhythms of the river and the city.

Though modest in scale and medium, the drawings are rich in subtle detail. Influences range from Seurat’s pointillism to the quiet tonal shifts of Richter or the conceptual clarity of Ruscha — but Kings’ work remains unmistakably her own. There’s a stillness here, a sense of time stretching out, that invites slow looking.

Kings trained at the Royal Academy Schools and has exhibited internationally. Her work has been commissioned for sites including Chatsworth House, Maggie’s Centre in Glasgow, and most recently San Vicente in New York, designed by Rose Uniacke.

A fully illustrated catalogue accompanies the exhibition, with a text by art writer Lily Le Brun, author of Looking to Sea: What Coastal Art Tells Us About Modern Britain.

Tarka Kings
Offer Waterman