Nimi Salon: What Happens When Art Misbehaves?

Salon Soundbites 🎙️ Reflections from the Pleasure of Misuse Exhibition

At our most recent Nimi Salon, we gathered at the Royal Society of Sculptors for a thoughtful evening exploring themes from the exhibition The Pleasure of Misuse — a playful, subversive show about objects, design, and expectations. Curated by Maria Hinel, the exhibition asked a deceptively simple question: What happens when everyday objects refuse to behave the way they’re meant to?

Maria opened the evening by sharing the story behind one of the show’s standout works — a cartoon by Glen Baxter of a cowboy beside a peculiar knife. It set the tone for the evening: humorous, strange, and quietly subversive.

“I just love this idea of cutting up an object whose sole purpose is to cut. So it’s almost like turning it on itself and then flopping.”

Artist Holly Stevenson then invited us into her world of misbehaving ceramics. She spoke about her series Sigmund Freud’s Ashtray, named after the famed psychoanalyst who was a heavy smoker and reportedly kept four ashtrays on his desk. Stevenson’s sculptures take the form of unusable, humorous objects — like ashtrays that can’t hold cigarettes or shoes that can’t be worn — challenging our assumptions around function and form. She uses Freud’s ashtray shape as a kind of vessel to hold ideas around the subconscious, humour, and emotional projection.

“This one is called Bezeto, which means occupied. But in psychoanalysis, it doesn’t really mean that. It means when your mind is occupied with something. I think this is quite a good example in the context of this show. It’s a joke about occupation… you can’t use the ashtray because it is already occupied.”

Artist Holly Hendry explored her ongoing fascination with bodily systems — not the neat, labelled diagrams from textbooks, but the messier, lived experience of being in a body. Her sculptural works often appear as fragments, openings, or invented anatomies that invite physical responses from viewers.

“I’m this sweating, crying, sneezing, emotional being — so far away from the diagrams that tell you how the body works.”

It’s gatherings like these that redefine what alternative networking can look like — playful, reflective, and centred on shared ideas rather than introductions. Like all Nimi socials, the evening struck a balance between art and connection — a kind of mindful socialising rooted in curiosity and conversation.

As we closed the evening, Maria gave us a glimpse of what’s next: an upcoming exhibition inspired by Primo Levi’s “Carbon” — a poetic journey tracking a single carbon particle through its many lives and forms. The work will take on a more serious tone than The Pleasure of Misuse, but still hold space for deeply personal reflections on how life moves through everything. Keep an eye on Maria’s work here — it’s one to watch.

Thank you to everyone who joined us for this quietly radical evening of humour, ideas, and connection 🌿 Are you curious about future Nimi Salons and behind-the-scenes moments like this? Join us for an upcoming Nimi Social — we’d love to see you there next time!