Memento Vivere/Memento Mori
Remember to Live – Remember You Must Die
Curated by Gaëtan Gauthier
The exhibition will run from 17 April to 30 July 2025 at Faith in Strangers.
Faith In Strangers proudly presents its first-ever curated exhibition: Memento Vivere – Memento Mori (Remember to Live – Remember You Must Die) — a sensual and soulful meditation on human connection, the body, and the ever-shifting rhythm of life by the sea.
Curated by Gaëtan Gauthier, this debut show is a celebration of presence — of dancing, of shared meals, of glances held and conversations sparked. Set against the moody tides of Margate, Memento Vivere – Memento Mori is a love letter to this place and the people who inhabit it, where each wave seems to whisper: remember to live… and remember, too, that it will not last.
Featuring works by Lily Hughes, Megan O’Reilly, Jamie Brown, Stephen Hiam, Ellie Tate, Alex Foster, and Jonathan Hughes, the exhibition layers print, painting, and sculpture to explore intimacy in its many forms — from fleeting touches to lasting impressions. These artists move through memory, sensuality, and ritual, inviting us to feel something real, raw, and unfiltered.
Margate becomes more than a backdrop here — it is a living pulse. This is a show about the delicious urgency of life, the beauty of endings, and the deep, human need to connect — with each other, with place, and with the wild magic of the sea.
Come ready to feel. Stay long enough to remember.
Jonathan Hughes
Jonathan is an artist inMargate working inceramics, producingautobiographicalsculpture alongside moretraditional vessels andpots. The work is deeplypersonal, producedintuitively and reflective ofthe mood in which it wasmade. This collection is aseries of dysfunctionalvessels, jars and vases.
Jamie Brown
Jamie Brown is a multi disciplined artist & designer whose practice can be characterised by a number of beliefs- Make new things out of things that already exist. When creating images, embrace chance, work fast, let the process dictate the mark making and build on happy accidents. Distilling makes things stronger, when imagery is reduced to its simplest form something truly impactful is created.
If working large scale in the physical environment, act in a site specific way, embracing the character of the existing materials and architecture, using them to your advantage.Combine ordinary objects to create the extraordinary through adaptation, play and juxtaposition. If we reimagine the potential of everyday materials we can elevate the mundane, live more sustainably and change the way we see the world around us.
Lily Hughes
Lily Hughes is a Margate-based artist making work that reflects everyday life including the political, the poorly, the boring and the strange. Lily aims make conceptual art with a strong basis in research while relying heavily on traditional craft practices. The work is founded upon a desire to make objects and fuelled by a need to try to articulate the complexity of the day to day. This broad net of interest allows room for introspection, with the resulting work often feeling hopeful and cynical at the same time.
Stephen Hiam
As an artist I am interested, tantalized even, by the magic of drawing forth from the imagination a thing to become real.
Unfiltered, mistakes included.
Creating, making things of beauty and grace.
Ecstasy. Loss. Love. Fear. Grief. Extreme emotions haphazardly piled one atop of another become themes to be expressed.
After Covid, changing countries and being without my studio and its equipment, I turned to using available spaces and resources to create and express myself. And thus began a pivot to work with just paper and pen.
Recently I have turned my hand to experimenting with sculpting. Exploring if there is a way for these forms I draw to exist as a three dimensional object.
Megan O'Reilly
Megan O'Reilly is a Margate-based artist known for her expressive and dynamic artworks, which explore themes of everyday life, mythology, folklore, and the divine feminine. Using vibrant colors, gestural brushstrokes, and layered textures, her work merges figuration and abstraction, evoking dreamlike and elusive narratives.
Beyond her own practice, Megan is deeply involved in fostering creativity within her community. She offers private art tutoring, hosts life drawing sessions, and facilitates women’s circles, creating spaces for artistic exploration and connection.
Her artistic process is intuitive and immersive—drawing inspiration from collected fragments of daily life and allowing ideas to evolve organically on the canvas. Through painting, mono-printing, and mixed media, she aims to capture emotion and atmosphere, using color as a fundamental vehicle of expression.
Alex Foster
Alex Foster his, an illustrator from Margate, UK, and he live and work here from my home studio by the sea. He use a layered and hand drawn approach his my work, to create maps and illustrations for lots of different uses like websites, books, prints, clothing and other bits.
In 2024 Latif Nasser with Radiolab helped to officially rename a quasi-moon of Venus to ‘ZOOZVE’ due to his misreading of 2s as Zs on one of my prints.
Ellie Tate
Ellie Tate is a self-taught artist living and working in Margate. She has exhibited her paintings widely in both solo and group shows in the UK, as well as exhibiting and working with established institutions such as The Royal Academy of Arts and Tate Modern.
Ellie combines observation and imagination to create semi-abstract landscapes which often represent feelings and experiences of awe and connectedness. Ellie is fascinated by the relationship between the subconscious and the conscious, and how the merging of the two via art-making can reveal insights about the inner workings of the mind. Ellie usually uses an automatic approach to begin her paintings, using paint to make random and involuntary marks which lay the foundation for a painting process that fluctuates between consideration and spontaneity. These particular paintings were inspired by walks along the Thanet coast.
Curated By Gaëtan Gauthier
Gaëtan Gauthier is a curator, cultural producer, and exhibition organiser with extensive experience in curating large-scale exhibitions and creating dynamic, community-driven projects. Gaëtan’s work explores the intersection of art, culture, and social justice, with a particular focus on amplifying underrepresented voices.
He is the founder of Margate Black Pride, an annual event that celebrates LGBTQIA+ people from African, Asian, Caribbean, Latin American, Pacific Islander, and Middle Eastern backgrounds, bringing forward diverse narratives within the global majority. As a curator, Gaëtan has worked with prestigious institutions, integrating AV and technical elements into immersive exhibitions that push the boundaries of contemporary art.
A passionate advocate for diversity and inclusion, Gaëtan’s curatorial practice reflects his belief in the transformative power of art to foster dialogue, challenge perceptions, and create a more inclusive cultural landscape. He is currently working on several high-profile projects, where he continues to champion emerging and established artists whose work speaks to the complexities of identity, culture, and history.
Gaëtan’s approach to curating is informed by his background and his lifelong commitment to fostering creativity, critical thinking, and community engagement. Through his work, he seeks to create spaces where art becomes a catalyst for connection and reflection, inviting audiences to reconsider their own relationship to the world around them.
How to find us
17 Ethelbert Crescent,Cliftonville,
Margate CT9 2DY