OLIVER HERBERT

Island Thinking, 2025

Part of Off-Season Margate, this project is a site-specific response to Margate Amusement Arcade.

I have always been fascinated by islands. As a child, I would spend hours drawing maps of fictional islands, filling them with glitzy resorts, waterparks, luxury hotels, airports, and bus stations. Looking back, I see this as an early fascination with imagined spaces of potential—places that may never fully exist but hold endless possibilities. Over time, this fascination has evolved into Island Thinking, a theoretical framework that shapes my creative practice.

Islands, arcades, and resorts like Margate have always symbolised places of promise. In the early '90s, my Gran would take me to Southport and New Brighton, resort towns just outside Liverpool, to play in the arcades. Those days felt otherworldly—high on Lilt, Pizza Hut, and the itchy residue of 2p coins on my palms.

For me, these spaces became arenas of commitment, where everything we believe we need feels tantalisingly close but often just out of reach. As an artist with a strong interest in education, this project seeks to visualise how I imagine the communities and spaces I inhabit. I envision them as archipelagos—not peripheral or marginal formations but as dynamic models for new modes of connection and transformation.

In these imagined spaces, palm trees, swimming pools, and precious gemstones coexist. They embody glamour and aspiration, yet behind them lies emptiness—an emptiness that holds potential for wildness and new ways of being. Materials like worn-down 2p coins won in arcades, pick 'n' mix sweets, iron pyrite and marble-effect sticky-back plastic become hosts for queer imaginings.

Set against the soundtrack of Cascada, Avicii and the sugary aroma of fresh doughnuts, this exhibition is a celebration of the joy and promise offered by Margate and its seafront arcades.

If you would like more information about the work- please contact me here.

Beach, 2025, Oil, acrylic and mixed media on found lenticular paper, 28cm x 38cm