Margo McDaid - 'Sisters with Secrets' to launch in Margate
“Every town has its secrets. Every woman carries a few.”
Sisters with Secrets transforms The Pie Factory into a space of quiet revelation, collective memory and unspoken truths.
At the heart of the exhibition is the idea that secrets are not signs of weakness but evidence of survival - stories held back, swallowed, protected or carried in silence. Through painting, print and installation, Margo McDaid invites visitors into an environment where confession becomes a form of release and solidarity.
A central confession box anchors the exhibition, offering audiences the chance to contribute anonymously to the emotional landscape of the show. These unseen voices sit alongside Margo’s new large-scale canvases and screen prints, works that balance vulnerability with defiance. A striking black-and-white classical room creates a moment of visual and psychological stillness - a space that feels at once sacred and theatrical, echoing both chapel and stage, as though every visitor is stepping into a scene where truth hovers just beneath the surface.
The exhibition unfolds in Margate, a town whose own story mirrors the themes of the work. Once dismissed, neglected and written off, Margate is now being rebuilt through creativity, independence and cultural resilience - one studio, one gallery, one act of belief at a time. In this context, Sisters with Secrets becomes not just a personal or female narrative but a civic one: about what is hidden, what is healed and what happens when voices return to spaces that were once abandoned.
Margo’s practice also extends beyond the gallery walls. Through the linked project with Oasis’s Love Shouldn’t Hurt, supporting domestic-violence services, the exhibition connects private experience with public action, reminding us that behind many secrets are structures of silence that art can help to challenge.
Sisters with Secrets: The Pie Factory, Margate, 16th-20th April
