Launch event
Artist talk and Artwork Reveal
SVA, 4 John Street, Stroud, GL5 2HA and 16 George Street, Stroud, GL5 3DY
Wednesday 10th June 7.30pm
Doors open at 7.30pm, talk starts at 8pm artwork reveal following the talk at 9pm.
Tickets: Pay What You Can £6/£8/£10
Artwork on show until 21st June
Town centres across the UK are suffering, this is a long term issue that has been widely recognised, while there are pockets of engagement a coordinated strategy is required to drive forward change and realise the value in occupying and activating empty spaces in a cost effective way.
Join Sickboy on Wednesday 9th June at 7:30pm to discuss the benefits and challenges faced making use of empty shops on a meanwhile basis. Sickboy is passionate about community and inspiring people to create, this topic will be discussed from an artist’s perspective. Highlighting to property owners the benefit of activation and the ease of collaborating with artists to bring the community together and support local businesses operating in the town centre.
This site-specific installation by SICKBOY occupies a vacant premises in a post-industrial town centre, activating a space shaped by absence and transition. Once a site of productivity, the building now exists in suspension between past function and an undefined future.
The work occupies the window façade, enabling it to be viewed from the street. At its centre is The Temple, the artist’s recurring symbol. Traditionally associated with permanence and positivity, it is reimagined here as a provisional, transient form. The installation explores impermanence as an ongoing condition. Through material and spatial intervention, it reflects cycles of use, abandonment, and renewal, inviting viewers to consider how meaning, identity, and place are continually constructed and eroded.
Feel free to join us at Fluorescent Smogg residency featuring Sickboy, at Site Festival Open Studios 13-14th and 20th June 11am - 5pm.
More info
Bristol-born street artist Sickboy will take over a vacant George Street premises in Stroud from 11–21 June, as part of Site Festival 2026.
Traditionally trained as a fine art painter, Sickboy turned to street art in 1995, pioneering the use of a visual logo in place of the stylised tag — a then-radical move that helped define the aesthetic of the British street art movement. His red and yellow Temple iconography is now recognised across the globe, and hiswork has featured in galleries from San Francisco to Tokyo, Munich to Paris, as well as in books, documentaries and film.
For Site Festival in June, Sickboy will present a new site-specific installation centred on his signature Temple symbol — reimagined not as a monument to permanence, but as a provisional, transient form visible from the street, exploring themes of impermanence and cycles of use and renewal.
The work will be presented in an empty retail unit on George Street, continuing SVA’s long-standing Meanwhile Use empty shops programme.
Fluorescent Smogg feat. Sickboy will be in residence for Open Studios in Chalford alongside 60 other artists in the Stroud Valleys over 2 weekends: 13th - 14th and 20th - 21st June.
The Site Festival launch of the Sickboy installation in George Street and artist talk at SVA, 4 John Street will take place on Wednesday 10th June 7pm.
SVA and Meanwhile Spaces
SVA has a strong reputation for delivering art exhibitions and workshops in Meanwhile Use spaces — empty shops temporarily reimagined for the arts. Over 30 years, we have worked with landlords and agents across more than 50 properties, consistently increasing footfall and supporting vacant units back into use. Our work has attracted national press coverage including the Guardian, and we are part of a UK-wide Meanwhile Space network with established relationships across local and national property companies.
Opening up empty shops creates accessible, ambitious and engaging spaces that respond directly to current social and financial pressures. Good-value use of underutilised property passes its benefits straight to the community — bringing art to people’s doorsteps in Stroud town centre. This light-touch approach makes creative use of existing infrastructure and natural footfall, with minimal additional transport required. Crucially, it reaches people who would never visit a purpose-built gallery, meeting them in a familiar retail environment that already forms part of their daily lives. The result is art that feels genuinely relevant — woven into people’s sense of place. For Stroud District residents and visitors alike, this is public art at its very best.