Sorika

Sorika is an on-going art and publishing project established by Gareth McConnell in 2013. It was initiated as a way to collaborate with other artists, with no manifesto beyond the realising of projects of shared interest, and with no commitment to any specific medium or genre. More recently, it has also functioned as a platform for the direct sale of artworks and editions online.

Since its inaugural publication, the novella Horse Latitudes by Chris Wilson in 2013. Sorika's projects have included Looking for Love for Love, a reworking of Looking for Love, Tom Wood’s seminal 1980s photo-book; A New Concise Reference Dictionary and Glossary of Usage Terms and Subjects in Contemporary Art by the artist and writer Neal Brown; and the co-curation and publication of Smiler: Photographs of London by Mark Cawson, produced in collaboration with the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London.

Sorika has also published a number of McConnell’s own works including the publications Sex, Drugs & Magick (Book II), The Horses and To The Beat Of The Drum.

Works published by Sorika are held in public collections including the British Library, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Walker Art Gallery and the Royal College of Art.

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Gareth McConnell

Gareth McConnell (b. 1972, Northern Ireland / The North of Ireland) is an artist and photographer, and founder and editor-in-chief of Sorika, an ongoing collaborative art and publishing project established in 2013.

His work has been featured in internationally recognised art, culture, and news publications including Aperture, Colours, Creative Review, Dazed, Frieze, Granta, la Repubblica, The Guardian, The Observer, Time, The New Yorker, and The New York Times.

His work has been included in major survey exhibitions such as Observers: Photographers of the British Scene from the 1930s to Now and The Portrait of Northern Ireland: Neither an Elegy nor a Manifesto. His work is the subject of several monographs including Contemporary Photographers (Steidl), Close Your Eyes (SPBH Editions), and The Horses (Sorika), and has appeared in numerous anthologies including Another Man: Men’s Style Stories (Rizzoli), The New York Times Magazine Photographs (Aperture), and Vitamin Ph: New Perspectives in Photography (Phaidon).

He has collaborated with brands including Adidas, BBC, Chloé, Jo Malone, Kiko Kostadinov, Nike, and Sports Banger, and has organised events and spoken at institutions including Tate Modern, the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, and the National Portrait Gallery, London.

His work is held in public and private collections including the British Council, the Elton John Art Collection, Imperial Health Charity, the Royal College of Art, Selfridges, and UBS.

Recent solo exhibitions include To The Beat Of The Drum, Ulster Museum, Belfast, 2021, and The Brighter the Flowers, The Fiercer the Town, Seen Fifteen, London, 2022. Recent group exhibitions include Photos on Fridges, Harkawik, New York, 2026 and Kindred: The Loneliness of Suffering and the Community of Lived Experience, Bethlem Museum of the Mind, London, 2026.