Exhibitions / Solo

Steppingstones

Collect Gallery, Tophane & Juma, Istanbul
15 September – 10 October 2022

Steppingstones was an exhibition by Richard Bartle at Collect Gallery, Istanbul, presented across two sites in Tophane and Juma in September and October 2022.

Exhibition Text

This exhibition marked Richard Bartle's final solo exhibition before returning to the UK after fourteen years living and working in Istanbul. Presented across Collect Gallery's two exhibition spaces in Tophane and Juma, Steppingstones brought together three interconnected bodies of work: On the Rubble of our Ancestors, Steppingstones and The Book of Streets.

Although each series emerged from a different point of departure, together they reflected a sustained investigation into the city as a place of accumulated histories, material traces and lived experience. Moving between painting, sculpture and installation, the exhibition explored Istanbul through its architecture, streets, shoreline and found objects, revealing the city as both an archaeological landscape and a contemporary place of encounter.

The principal installation occupied Collect Gallery's Tophane space, where large-scale paintings and installations created an immersive environment. A second, more intimate presentation at Juma extended the exhibition into a neighbouring venue, allowing visitors to encounter the work across two distinct architectural settings.

Drawing together ideas developed over almost two decades, Steppingstones formed a bridge between Bartle's earlier investigations into the fragments attributed to Siyah Kalem and his later archaeological practice. Rather than presenting the city as a fixed historical narrative, the exhibition invited viewers to navigate between observation, memory and material evidence, discovering relationships between objects, places and stories encountered along the way.

Installation Views

Selected Works

The exhibition brought together three interconnected bodies of work developed during Bartle's years in Istanbul. A small selection is shown below. Click each image to explore the complete projects.

Legacy

Steppingstones was Richard Bartle's final solo exhibition before returning to the United Kingdom after fourteen years living and working in Istanbul. Bringing together works from The Book of Streets, Steppingstones and On the Rubble of our Ancestors, it marked the culmination of an extended investigation into the city's architecture, archaeology and material culture.

Looking back, the exhibition forms a natural bridge between Bartle's Istanbul practice and the archaeological research that would later develop through the Unearthed project in Lincolnshire and South Yorkshire. Rather than representing an ending, it signalled the beginning of a new phase of work in which observation, landscape and material evidence continued to shape his practice.