Charlotte Colbert Transforms The Fitzrovia Chapel with Immersive Exhibition Supernatural Tendencies

This July, multimedia artist and filmmaker Charlotte Colbert returns to The Fitzrovia Chapel with Supernatural Tendencies, an immersive exhibition that reimagines the historic chapel as a dreamlike world of myth, ritual and imagination. Running from 1–9 July 2026, the exhibition continues Colbert’s ongoing exploration of the subconscious and folklore. Set within the ornate interiors of The Fitzrovia Chapel, Supernatural Tendencies unfolds as a multisensory environment where sculpture, sound, and symbolism converge. Enhancing the exhibition’s immersive atmosphere is a bespoke soundscape created in collaboration with acclaimed musician Birdy. A limited-edition vinyl release will be available during the exhibition, with proceeds supporting Effective Altruism Funds.

“I am obsessed with narratives and stories”, explains Colbert. “We are the stories we tell our children, the stories we tell ourselves as a society and as individuals. Everything around us was imagined by someone before; our clothes, our buildings, our political systems. What we imagine today becomes tomorrow’s reality. Collective imagination is hugely powerful. And sometimes the more impossible it seems to reimagine our future, the more essential it becomes.”

Reflecting on these ideas, Colbert explains, “Fairy tales are stories in code. Like gateways to secret messages from past generations. They operate through archetypes and remind us everything could be re-imagined differently. What you think, what you dream, what you imagine has the power to change the world.”

The Fitzrovia Chapel is delighted to welcome Colbert back to its iconic space of reflection and resonance. “Her dreamlike, meditative work fits perfectly with our history as a place of sanctuary to sit and reflect, escaping the stresses of everyday life and moving into another world,” says Madeleine Boomgaarden, Director of The Fitzrovia Chapel.

Curated by Svetlana Marich, the exhibition builds on the momentum of Colbert’s recent projects in New York and Venice, where her multidisciplinary practice has gained international acclaim across both contemporary art and cinema.

Colbert has recently presented a two-site takeover featuring a four-metre-tall sculpture at the Venice Biennale on the Grand Canal opposite the Guggenheim, alongside a second installation in the gardens of the iconic Aman Hotel. Earlier this year, she unveiled monumental 30 foot polished-steel public works in New York’s Flatiron NoMad and Meatpacking districts, transforming public plazas into immersive surrealist landscapes.

Colbert’s surrealist sculptures dissolve the boundaries between reality, mythology, and dream. Oversized eyes, wishing wells, and silver trees of dreams evoke the archetypes of childhood, inviting viewers to encounter the world anew through imagination, possibility, and reinvention. With Supernatural Tendencies, Colbert invites audiences into a liminal world where reality, fantasy, and ritual collide. “Charlotte Colbert sculpts in time, creating portals where one can drop back into the magic of childhood: where fairytales are all possible and beauty is everlasting,” enthuses curator Svetlana Marish. Throughout her practice, Colbert has explored themes of dreams, memory, mythology, femininity, and the unconscious. Her works feel less like static objects than fragments of an unfolding dream narrative — psychologically charged spaces suspended somewhere between fairytale and hallucination.

*Charlotte Colbert – Supernatural Tendencies © 2026 Charlotte Colbert_Photo © Barney Clark from Stem Studios.*

At the centre of the exhibition is Where Angels Live, a monumental stainless-steel sculpture that anchors the chapel with both grandeur and intimacy. A reflective tree adorned with votive objects, the work draws inspiration from Colbert’s travels through Mexico and her pilgrimage along the Camino de Santiago.

Ritual and symbolism have long occupied a central role in her visual language, becoming here a meditation on belief, devotion, and humanity’s enduring search for meaning.

Meanwhile, the titular wishing well-shaped sculpture, Supernatural Tendencies, functions as a ‘liminal’ focal point — a symbolic threshold between worlds that connects the surrounding works. Long before coins became customary, wells and springs were revered as sacred sites.

Other works, such as Curiouser and Curiouser, a throne-like chair structured to hold books, invites us to a shared experience of reading. Each piece reflects Colbert’s ongoing fascination with storytelling and the unseen forces that shape human perception.

“Collective imagination is the basis of the structures we live in,” Colbert has said. “We can’t let those be taken away from us. We have to imagine our own futures, futures we actually want to live in, not let them be imagined for us.”

The exhibition also reflects Colbert’s distinctly cinematic approach to art-making.

While establishing herself internationally as a visual artist, she built a reputation as a photographer and filmmaker, and her installations often possess the atmosphere and psychological tension of film sets and dream sequences.

This sensibility extends across her wider practice. Whether working in sculpture, photography, or cinema, Colbert creates immersive worlds that challenge conventional perceptions of reality.

Her photographic works frequently resemble stills from imagined films — theatrical, uncanny, and emotionally charged — drawing on influences ranging from Surrealism and mythology to psychoanalysis and feminist literature.

Colbert’s acclaimed debut feature film, She Will, brought many of these themes to cinematic life. A witchy, psychologically charged exploration of the supernatural and female transformation, the film stars Alice Krige and Malcolm McDowell and was executive produced by horror master Dario Argento. Blending gothic horror with dreamlike surrealism, She Will explored trauma, power, memory, witchcraft, and the occult through a hauntingly atmospheric lens. Praised for its hypnotic imagery and psychological depth, the film established Colbert as a filmmaker with a singular visual language — one that resonates strongly throughout Supernatural Tendencies.

Most recently, Colbert completed filming on her second feature, Becoming Capa, exploring the lives of legendary war photographers Gerda Taro and Robert Capa. Like much of her work, the film continues her fascination with image-making, memory, and perception.

With Supernatural Tendencies, Colbert offers precisely that invitation: a chance to step beyond the rational and into a world where myth, emotion, and imagination reclaim their power.

Supernatural Tendencies will run at Fitzrovia Chapel from 1 – 9 July

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