Mary Kelly Opens London Exhibition 'We don't want to set the world on fire' at Pippy Houldsworth Gallery

American artist Mary Kelly opens a new exhibition titled 'We don't want to set the world on fire' at Pippy Houldsworth Gallery in London from 14 November 2025 to 17 January 2026. The show addresses climate change, global conflict, and protest, featuring works like World on Fire Timeline (2020), a fifteen-foot mixed-media piece incorporating a chronological timeline of global conflicts beginning with the 1949 Arms Race. Kelly's career spans fifty years, evolving from feminist projects like Post Partum Document (1973-1976) to works examining war's relationship to gender, including Interim (1984-1989), Gloria Patri (1992), Mea Culpa (1999), and The Ballad of Kastriot Rexhepi (2001). She developed a signature medium using compressed lint from dryer filters for its fragile, ephemeral quality. The exhibition includes personal ephemera such as letters from friends, referenced in works like Tucson, 1972 (2017) and London, 1974 (2017). Kelly discusses influences from French theory, linguistics, semiotics, and filmmakers Straub-Huillet, as well as concepts of duration and 'diegetic space' from theorist Peter Woollen. She reflects on her role as an 'ethnographer of my moment' from the women's movement onward, questioning systems of power and the possibility of hope amid rising right-wing authoritarianism and genocide.