Alix Marie & A---Z (Anne Duffau) present a night of sirens sounding, between Aeaea and the rocks of Scylla where sea creatures emerge at dawn to take you on a journey you might never come back from...
Dive deep into the water with us, and succumb to the temptation of the siren's song!
In correlation with Alix Marie’s exhibition in Switzerland titled: Sucking on the night, Musée Des Beaux Arts Le Locle
6.30pm - 10pm
£5 advance / £8 on the door
With Performances by
Zoe Marden / Mermaid Rain / Holly Slingsby
Films by
Maya Deren / Sarah Duffy / Takata Fuyuhiko / Dakota Gearhart / Evan Ifekoya / Natalia Janula / Tai Shani / Zadie Xa
A Sound Piece by
Katarina Hruskova
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Maya Deren
One of the most important American experimental filmmakers and entrepreneurial promoters of the avant-garde in the 1940s and 1950s. Deren was also a choreographer, dancer, film theorist, poet, lecturer, writer and photographer. The function of film, Deren believed, like most art forms, was to create an experience; each one of her films would evoke new conclusions, lending her focus to be dynamic and always-evolving.[1] She combined her interests in dance, Haitian Vodou and subjective psychology in a series of surreal, perceptual, black and white short films. Using editing, multiple exposures, jump cutting, superimposition, slow-motion and other camera techniques to her fullest advantage, Deren creates continued motion through discontinued space, while abandoning the established notions of physical space and time, with the ability to turn her vision into a stream of consciousness. Perhaps one of the most influential experimental films in American cinema was her collaboration with Alexander Hammid on Meshes of the Afternoon (1943). She continued to make several more films of her own, including At Land (1944), A Study in Choreography for Camera (1945), and Ritual in Transfigured Time (1946) – writing, producing, directing, editing, and photographing them with help from only one other person, Hella Heyman, as camerawoman. She also appeared in a few of her films but never credited herself as an actress, downplaying her roles as anonymous figures rather than iconic deities.
Sarah Duffy (b.1986) lives and works in the UK. Duffy graduated in 2013 with a MFA from Goldsmiths, University of London; after which she became the inaugural recipient of The Acme Goldsmiths MFA Studio Award. Projects and exhibitions include: Solo Performance Om3am x Sarah Duffy hosted by Hans-Ulrich Obrist, Jos Bitelli and Felix Melia; Mount Florida Screenings at Glasgow Museum of Modern Art; A Faraway Rendez-vous at SixtyEight Art Institute as part of Copenhagen Art Week; Artists Behind Bars at Matt’s Gallery; Solo performance Enjoy The Silence at The Camden Arts Centre; The Ol' Switcheroo at Jupiter Woods, alongside Sophie Jung and Rebecca Lennon and The Frequency of Magic at out_sight Gallery, Seoul. Duffy has participated in several international residency programs including, The Arnis Residency, Germany; Terra Firma at Chateau de Bosmelet, Normandy and a 3-month residency in South Korea as part of The Seoul Museum of Art’s international residency program. From September to November 2019, Duffy will be in residence at Lugar a Dudas in Cali, Colombia as part of The Triangle Network’s International Fellowship programme.
https://www.sarahcduffy.co.uk/
Takata Fuyuhiko (b. 1987 in Hiroshima) has expressed themes as diverse as religion, myth, fairytales, gender, trauma, sex, and the BL (“Boys’ Love“) manga sub-genre, in humorous, occasionally erotic videos with a pop sensibility.
Dissecting, commenting on, and exaggerating universal human themes in unconventional ways, Takata’s works look absurd, but are in fact meticulously composed. Thus though humorous in nature, they serve as caricatures of a sort that raise a variety of issues.Of particular note is their critical take on definitions of masculine and feminine, at a time when these are being increasingly called into question.
http://fuyuhikotakata.com/
Dakota Gearhart makes art that bundles together her interests in perception, the role of care and intimacy, and the importance of fantasy in articulating the perils of twenty-first century ideology. She has completed residency programs with the Bronx Museum of the Arts, Studios of MASS MoCA, Vermont Studio Center, Studios of Key West, and the NARS Foundation (NY). She has received the Artist Trust GAP award, the 4Culture Individual Project Grant, and The New Foundation Residency Grant. Her work has been exhibited at the Tacoma Art Museum (WA), Henry Art Gallery (Seattle), On The Ground Floor (Los Angeles), The Front (New Orleans), S1 Gallery (Portland), ROY G BIV (Columbus), KARST (Plymouth, UK), Vulpes Vulpes (London), and Taiyuan Normal University (Taiyuan, China). She received her MFA from the University of Washington and currently, lives and works between Seattle, WA and Brooklyn, NY.
https://www.dakotagearhart.com/
Katarina Hruskova (1984 in Ruzomberok (SK)) lives and works in Berlin and Ruzomberok.
Gerrit Rietveld Academie, Amsterdam (BFA, 2010)
Royal College of Art in London (MA, 2014)
Hruskova’s work in photography, written/spoken word and installation translates the body’s affective relationship to space by relating an intimacy to the inanimate and inconspicuous.
She points out the agency of objects and matter that slip under the radar by way of constant presence and proximity. She creates places of safety to nudge at their borders; she occupies a fragile comfort zone where prolonged stillness provokes action.
Recent exhibitions and performances include Cumulus Root at Karlin Studios in Prague (CZ), Useful Photography at the Slovak National Gallery in Bratislava (SK), The waning yolk at Swiss Cottage Gallery in London (UK), Porous Whispers at Obroncow Stalingradu 17 in Szczecin (PL), The Skin of the Eye – pt.1 at Vermillion Sands in Copenhagen (DK), Black Tower opening night at Black Tower Projects in London (UK), Sign just under the skin at House of Egorn in Berlin (DE).
Recent commissions, residencies and awards: Marion Richardson commission, Radar/LU Arts (UK), Visegrad Fund visual and sound arts residency AIR FUTURA (CZ), Stipend of the Slovak Arts Council (SK), Residency Unlimited NY (USA), Oskar Cepan Award (YVAA).
https://www.katarinahruskova.com/
Evan Ifekoya: What would it mean to start from a place of abundance, rather than scarcity? Drawing on ancestral and intuitive wisdom; as well as the transformative potential of water, Evan Ifekoya’s recent moving image and audio works explore a cosmology of healing through sound, stillness and the creation of intentional space. Their work has been presented at: Gasworks, De Appel, Serpentine Gallery, Camden Arts Centre, La Casa Encendida, KW Institute and Wysing Arts Centre. They established the collectively run Black Obsidian Sound System (B.O.S.S) in 2018, and recently won the Kleinwort Hambros’ Emerging Artists Award 2019.
http://evanifekoya.com/
Natalia Janula’s work often consists of mix media assemblages, which employ a material vocabulary of humanoid silicone casts, latex photographic prints, fragile anatomical miniatures of body parts, female cosmetic accessories, high-viscosity liquids, lm, CGI animation and latex wearables. It playfully equivocates between the organic and synthetic, sometimes simulating entities whose physiologies include both technological and biological components. It is a relationship that feels increasingly liquid in both its application and substance. The final expression of this romance forms an off-kilter specimen cabinet for an age in which the human and the techno- logical become ever more fundamentally intertwined.
Zoë Marden is an artist, curator and writer. She was born and raised in Hong Kong and is now currently based in London. She works with performance, video, text, sound, sculpture and installation to create alternate worlds and speculative futures. Her work is research focused and is concerned with intersectional feminism and where it overlaps with the post-colonial. Her intimate performances play with the voice, activating soundscapes of desire and vulnerability. Her more recent projects have been investigating the mythologies of witches and mermaids and their resonance within contemporary culture.
https://www.instagram.com/zoemarden/?hl=en
Alix Marie (b.1989) is a French artist based in London, working across the mediums of photography, sculpture and installation. She graduated from Central Saint Martins College in 2011 with a first class honours degree in fine art and later completed an MA in photography at the Royal College of Art with distinction. Her work explores our relationship to bodies and their representation, through processes of objectification, fragmentation, magnification and accumulation. Since 2009 Marie has been featured in exhibitions internationally and she has taken part in a number of artist residencies, including Void in Athens (2017) and the Speed Residency at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London (2015). In 2017 she won the Portfolio Review Award, was selected for the 11th edition of Foam Talent Call, and her first artist book Bleu was published by Morel Books. In 2019 she is being awarded the Vic Odden Award for a notable achievement in the art of photography by an artist aged 35 or under by the Royal Photographic Society. Marie will also be included in the Peer to Peer exhibition at Open Eye Gallery in Liverpool and at SCOP in Shangai and present a new solo show Sucer La Nuit at Musée des Beaux Arts Le Locle in Switzerland in the fall. Recent exhibitions include SHREDDED, Roman Road, London (Solo, 2019); Large-scale reconstruction: Body. Time. Context, FotoDepartament, St. Petersburg, (2018); and ADYTA, Ratinger Tor, Düsseldorf (Solo, 2018), as part of Duesseldorf Photo Weekend 2018.
http://alixmarie.com/
Mermaid Rain
https://www.instagram.com/thatmermaidrain/
Tai Shani's multidisciplinary practice, comprising performance, film, photography and installation, revolves around experimental narrative texts. These alternate between familiar narrative tropes and structures and theoretical prose in order to explore the construction of subjectivity, excess and affect and the epic as the ground for a post-patriarchal realism.
Tai Shani was born in London. She has presented her work extensively in the UK and abroad: recent exhibitions and commissions include Turner Contemporary, Margate (2019), Turner Prize Nominee, Glasgow International (2018); Tetley, Leeds (2018); Tensta Konsthall, Stockholm (2016); RADAR commission, Loughborough University (2016); Serpentine Galleries (2016); Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt (2015); Southbank Centre, London (2014–15); Arnolfini, Bristol (2013); Matt’s Gallery, London (2012); and FRAC Nord-Pas de Calais and Loop Festival, Barcelona (2011); The Barbican, London (2011); ICA, London (2011).
Shani has participated in Prospect 1.5 New Orleans and the Herzeliya Biennial, 2009, as well as several residencies including Wysing Art Centre and HOMESESSION, Barcelona. She is also a permanent resident at Gasworks, LondonShani is currently a Tutor on the RCA's Contemporary Art Practice programme.
https://www.taishani.com/
Holly Slingsby (born 1983, UK) is based in Margate, UK. She studied at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art, Oxford University; and the Slade School of Art, London. Her practice cen- tres on performance and uses props, costumes and video. Her most recent work explores the fe- male body in relation to fertility myths and medicine. Slingsby has had solo exhibitions and performances at CRATE, Margate (2019); Margate Festival (2018); Bòlit, Centre d'Art Contemporani, Girona (2016); Tintype, London (2015); DKUK, London (2015); and SHIFT., London (2012). Her work has been shown at Turner Contemporary, Margate; Katzman Contemporary, Toronto; Matt’s Gallery, London; Pump House Gallery, London; Spike Is- land, Bristol; Modern Art Oxford; the Freud Museum, London; FEM Festival, Girona, Spain; Art Licks Weekend, London; the ICA, London; and the Barbican, London. In 2018 she published an artist’s book with Publication Studio London and The Bower; and participated in the international touring exhibition Transitional States: Hormones at the Crossroads of Art and Science.
https://www.hollyslingsby.com/
Zadie Xa uses live performance, video, painting and textiles to explore how disparate cultural experiences inform identities and notions of self. Her layered costume works are sites for exploring personal cultural histories that stitch together personally relevant imagery sourced from music, digital space, fashion and art history. Xa has developed a system of personalised symbols that propose entirely new images and objects, creating a personal visual language for articulating nuanced Asian identity narratives, which are frequently situated within fantastical or supernatural realms. Throughout her practice, Xa uses water and marine ecologies as metaphors for exploring the unknown, whilst also alluding to abstract notions of homeland.
Zadie Xa was born in Vancouver Canada and currently lives in London UK. She received an MA in Painting at the Royal College of Art in 2014 and her BFA at Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design in 2007.
https://www.zadiexa.com/
A---Z - Anne Duffau is a cultural producer and researcher, founder of the nomadic platform: A---Z (www.abc-z.org). A---Z reflects on current socio-political issues: in the gaze on the ‘other’ and its representation, its definition for new possibilities: future bodies, gender identities, empowerment in deconstructing (hi)stories & exploring technology, its opacity / How can we imagine an alternative & revolutionary world through Sci-Fi narratives? Exploring artistic practices & knowledge exchange through collaborations, presentations, soundscapes, screenings & discussions A---Z aims at opening up to audiences by sharing discursive practices in order to challenge preconceived ideas on race, gender identities and the so-called history in terms of power relationship. Anne has collaborated in various projects with ArtLicks, CGP Gallery, Mimosa House, V22, Danielle Arnaud, Please Stand By, or-bits .com, jury member at PAF Olomouc & Tenderflix. She is co-curating Dark Water Series with Tai Shani. She works at the Royal College of Art as the Curriculum and Special Projects Coordinator for the School of Arts & Humanities, used to run the StudioRCA Riverlight presenting A---Z projects (2016-2018). Anne is currently a Visiting Lecturer at the RCA Contemporary Art Programme.
www.abc-z.org