Following on from Maheke’s solo show at the gallery, I Lost Track of the Swarm, which aqnb recently reviewed, the pair will discuss how dance has been key to Maheke’s practice and life in articulating and engaging with de-colonial and feminist thoughts.
Both artists work within an emancipatory project, focussing their research through dance in the case of niv Acosta whose ‘CLAPBACK‘ performance piece stunned bodies and the walls they inhabited at Berlin’s KW space back in March, and through installation, video and “furtive interventions” in Maheke’s, who surrounds and impresses the bodies in the rooms and videos that he creates.
Illuminated by a torch attached to his body, Paul Maheke creates a spotlight at South London Gallery. For his I Lost Track of the Swarm solo exhibition he appears on-screen, in the first of two rooms, where fragments of a dance sequence appear across three channels facing different directions. Running March 18 to May 22, the show is part of a series of events that marks the culmination of Maheke’s six-month Graduate residency (2015-16) at the Peckham space. Here he navigates his way through the liminal terrain of video with physical gestures drawing on hip hop —which he spoke about as part of ‘Beyond Beyonce‘ at Open School East last year —and subcultures of queer black identity like the Ballroom scene. The dance explores literal and metaphorical visibility, of bodies taking up space as political presence and resistance. The scanning spotlight suggests both the stage and the dance floor, and speaks of acts of collectivity and survival or of what the press release describes as “gestures of remembrance”, where movement is both expressive and transformative.
Paul Maheke, I Lost Track of the Swarm (2016). Exhibition view. Photo by Andy Keate. Courtesy SLG, London.
A lavender glow on the bottom edges of the screens draws the viewer’s eyes up to the light source which is a glowing ceiling tile and, despite the picturesque hue that saturates the space, inside it is what looks like dead cockroaches, clumps of hair and leaves, but the bugs are plastic and the hair synthetic. Maheke’s dance in the video runs in parallel to the semitransparent light box of objects overhead; in how lighting and music can turn a space into a place of gathering andaffinity, the synthetic hair as a cosmetic extension and assertion of identity. Despite appearing dead, there is a more positive take on transmutation through the symbol of the cockroach as resilient, and as animals that move and communicate in groups. Sewn onto the curtains in the space are sections of text that run across them, and though they remain still, motion is suggested in their content: “to read the waverin’ of the swarm as a resilient flicker, a gesture towards transformation.”
The second room is also suffused with a lavender tint from four strips of UV lighting that make the white synthetic floor rug glow. We hear a 23-minute sound piece by producer Nkisi, mixing Congo’s Leele and West African club music, as footsteps emerge and distorted vocals repeat the phrase “dance towards transformation”. There are two alternative ways to listen, through two speakers on the wall or through two sets of headphones at a greater intensity, and it is a contradictory space of contemplation and activity as people sit down on the rug to hear more closely while the beat induces their bodies to movement. The carpet and headsets, along with the custom-made curtain rails and bare floorboards in the next room emphasise the domestic architecture of the exhibition space. A tension between dynamism and stasis permeates both rooms, between the moving body in the videos and the beat of its soundtrack, in contrast to the quietude, the calm of the the floor rug and the inanimate debris collected in the ceiling tile.
Paul Maheke, I Lost Track of the Swarm (2016). Exhibition view. Photo by Andy Keate. Courtesy SLG, London.
The animation of the gallery through light and music is undercut by discomfort, from looking up and seeing outlines of cockroachesm, and hair, and leaves, and dirt from the street suggesting different realities behind the facade. The weaves that can be found in nearby salons in South London Gallery’s surrounding neighbourhoods reference both local Afro-Caribbean communities, as well as those in France where Maheke was born and studied. In using cultural forms from Francophone Africa, including Nkisi’s musical references, the exhibition presents diaspora communities as acts and spaces of liberation.
Maheke’s I Lost Track of the Swarm looks at the production and articulation of subjectivity in relation to the collective or said ‘swarm’, and the use of bodily comportment in relation to self-expression and desire. Through the diffused purple lighting and materials, it explores what the accompanying text calls ‘black femme’ subjectivities within a wider exploration of the position of Black artists in the West, in the face of institutional racism, gentrification and cultural appropriation.**
SALT. is launching and celebrating its eighth issue, ‘Noli Me Tangere’ at London’sSouth London Gallery on March 11.
How can you touch something by not touching it? Freud’s aphorism, “touch is the first act of possession” hovers over the issue like a threat, says the event’s text.
‘Noli Me Tangere’ (‘Touch Me Not’ in Latin) aims to overthrow the privileging of the visual in favour of the sensorial: “It is an inherently feminist art practice to muddy the translation between the see-able and the say-able.”
After the premiere ofSophie Cundale‘s film ‘After Picasso, God’ at the Peckhamplexsold out last month, a second screening will be available at the same location on March 9.
Cundale’s film, which was co-commissioned by Serpentine Cinema Series and South London Gallery is a tale of a woman who goes to see a hypnotherapist to address an unwanted addiction. As a part of her cure, objects, images and people are transformed and pain is brought to the surface and removed.
The performance, developed in conjunction with Moulton’s recent video, Mindplace Thoughtstream, comes woven through some of the artist’s video works for a layered multimedia experience of the “anxiety and dreams associated with bio medical advance and alternative medicine”.
The Californian-born artist, whose background lies in Art and Anthropology, has made a lifelong project of her ongoing video/performance series, Whispering Pines, in which her alter ego, Cynthia, is healed by an “Avon lady/witch-healer”. Building on themes of self-healing and the “hysterics of personal improvement”, Moulton’s recent explores the gaps between the catharsis and cliché intrinsic to quests of self-improvement.
The series brings together presentations of new works and commissioned writing by artists and writers considered emerging, using the format of an open forum to invite critical discussion and feedback in a relaxed atmosphere.
The event will showcase the UK premiere of Hirsch’s Playground at Goldsmiths’George Wood Theatre on July 25, a play by the New York-based video and performance artist drawing on her experiences of ‘coming-of-age’ and the construction of gender and sexuality against the backdrop of late-90s AOL chat rooms.
July 26 will feature the UK premiere of Sutela’s New Degrees of Freedom, a living media project by the Helsinki-based artist and writer, as well as a panel discussion between Hirsch, Sutela and art historian and writer Giulia Smith at the SLG space.
Taking its title from Elvia Wilk‘s ‘Where Looks Don’t Matter and Only the Best Writers Get Laid’ (2013), and organized by curators Rózsa Farkas and Helen Kaplinsky, the event explores the continued drive towards liberation from identity in the aftermath of Posthumanism’s failure to realise a decentralised, post-gender world.
The brother-duo, responsible for the creation of Birmingham’s Eastside Projects, works in a range of media, including drawing, sculpture and installation, bringing their eclectic style to everything from solo exhibitions to public projects.
For the panel discussion (chaired by Jo Melvin), the Bloors will explore the ideas they developed during their residency at Flat Time House (and where they now have an exhibition), also welcoming curator Jes Fernie, artist Nils Norman and art historian Richard Clay, into a conversation about vandalism, public art and the art of appropriation.
Group exhibition Welcome to Iraq is running at South London Gallery, March 14 to June 1.
A re-staging of what was originally shown as part of the National Pavilion of Iraq at Venice Biennale 2013, the acclaimed exhibition presents the multi-media works of eleven various artists, most of whom live and work in Iraq.
Curated by Jonathan Watkins to demonstrate the broad spectrum and diversity of artistic practices in the country, it features controversial photographer Jamal Penjweny, sculptor and filmmaker Furat al Jamil, renowned political cartoonist Abdul Raheem Yassir, and all-surface painter Cheeman Ismaeel.
To complete the spectator’s ostensible passage into Iraq, the gallery is equipped with a salon-like chamber where visitors are invited to rest and enjoy some tea, surrounded by relevant reading material and learning a bit about Iraqi culture.
The Nina Stewart Artist Residency is now open for submissions for post graduate artists finishing between October 2012 and September 2013. Last year Eoghan Ryancompleted the six month residency at South London Gallery culminating in his Oh Wicked Flesh! exhibition earlier this year.
The selected resident will receive rent free accommodation at the gallery’s artist flat, studio space and a £5,000 bursary, as well as monthly mentoring sessions and a final exhibition at SLG with the chance to produce an accompanying publication, between November 2013 and April 2014. Applications close on Friday, September 6. See the SLG website for details. **
Eoghan Ryan, ‘Oh wicked flesh!’ (2013). Film still. Image courtesy of the artist.
