Sport

Five sports, five paintings, and the line between posing and being caught.

Charlie Roberts has made five paintings for five sports: football, surfing, cycling, tennis and running. Each centres on figures stretched tall and caught in full motion, looking at first like an image made for a feed. A drone films a runner above a glacier. A frog watches a football match from a toadstool. On an empty clay court the tennis balls hang in the air and never fall. Is the figure living the moment, or posing for the camera? Roberts keeps the question open, and the longer you look the more turns up that has no business being there, until the perfect picture admits that it is a painting. He is as rooted in fashion as in painting: for the show he has painted the gallery window by hand and made scarves and T-shirts with Oslo's Dapper. Charlie Roberts Sport runs as part of Off Season, 17 June to end of July 2026.