Exhibition by
Bassam Issa Al-Sabah and Jennifer Mehigan
Exhibition installation (detail) at VSSL Studio - Biolytic Daughter - A collaboration between Bassam Issa Al-Sabah and Jennifer Mehigan. Photographic documentation by Marco Berardi & Baiba Sprance. 2025 - (Image Description: Sculptural detail showing a bronze-toned dragon claw resting beside bronze-toned wings and a foamex-cut horse’s foot at the centre, adorned with small pearls nestled within and scattered nearby, illuminated by a warm, greenish-gold ambient light).Opening Hours
Opening Night: 6pm to 9pm, Thursday 6 November12pm to 5pm, 6th to 30th of November
Thursday to Saturday (Closed Sunday to Wednesday)
at VSSL Studio
︎︎︎Audio Recording of the Exhibition Text
︎︎︎Plain English Version of the Exhibition Text
︎︎︎Visual Story of how to get to VSSL Studio
︎︎︎ArtVerge Interview
︎︎︎artfridge Interview
︎︎︎ART PLUGGED Feature
Exhibition installation at VSSL Studio - Biolytic Daughter - A collaboration between Bassam Issa Al-Sabah and Jennifer Mehigan. Photographic documentation by Marco Berardi & Baiba Sprance. 2025 - (Image Description: Exhibition view showing two seated visitors watching a video projection featuring a figure standing against a vivid, painterly landscape, with English subtitles visible at the bottom of the screen, illuminated by yellow-green ambient light).
Still from "Uncensored Lilac" HD CGI Film (2024). A collaboration between Bassam Issa Al-Sabah and Jennifer Mehigan. - (Image Desciption: The digital image depicts a fantastical figure with a smooth, pale face and piercing red eyes. From their head extend multiple fleshy, twisting, horn-like forms that resemble both antlers and tendrils. White petal-like fragments float around them, creating movement against the dark backdrop. The combination of humanoid and otherworldly features evokes a sense of dreamlike intensity).
At the centre of Biolytic Daughter is Uncensored Lilac, a 30-minute video work that tells a story of revenge and desire. A group of goddesses and their assembly of familiars, pets, servants, and technologies are lounging. Separated from one another, they share a land but not a common ground. They have been invaded. They are pretty, hot, bothered, and bored. They are ready to destroy each other. They look deep into the camera and recite their deepest wishes, hopes, dreams, and fantasies. Meanwhile, temperatures are rising. They morph and grow and make their rage known. Quick to anger, their tempers rise with the heat.
Video documentation of the exhibition Biolytic Daughter by Bassam Issa Al-Sabah and Jennifer Mehigan, recorded by Marco Berardi & Baiba Sprance. 2025
Set in a dreamlike hallucinatory landscape, the film features a series of monologues given by these mega-femme entities who have everything and nothing to say. They describe their hopes and desires, bicker, interact from a distance, and refuse to unite. In the cultivation of an economy where hotness equals power, this kind of global warming is no surprise – rising tempers and rising temperatures. Increasingly isolated from each other, they hold on tight to their apolitical, apathetic, consumer-driven dreams.
Within the exhibition space, a series of sculptures, multiple sized cutouts, paintings and prints extend this world out from the screen. The brutality of these mega-femmes comes to life: giant, veiny legs and a woolly sheep act as monuments disrupting the scale of the world built in the film and anchoring us to their climate-altered world. Contrasting the relationship between avatars and screens, and the feminine and the landscape – a common trope in feminist utopian literature – Bassam Issa Al-Sabah and Jennifer Mehigan question how we embody and are altered by climate collapse. Reflecting on the flatness of the screen, and their flattening of politics, they explore the impossibility and bureaucracy of being right in what can feel like the end of the world.
Within the exhibition space, a series of sculptures, multiple sized cutouts, paintings and prints extend this world out from the screen. The brutality of these mega-femmes comes to life: giant, veiny legs and a woolly sheep act as monuments disrupting the scale of the world built in the film and anchoring us to their climate-altered world. Contrasting the relationship between avatars and screens, and the feminine and the landscape – a common trope in feminist utopian literature – Bassam Issa Al-Sabah and Jennifer Mehigan question how we embody and are altered by climate collapse. Reflecting on the flatness of the screen, and their flattening of politics, they explore the impossibility and bureaucracy of being right in what can feel like the end of the world.
Exhibition installation (detail) at VSSL Studio - Biolytic Daughter - A collaboration between Bassam Issa Al-Sabah and Jennifer Mehigan. Photographic documentation by Marco Berardi & Baiba Sprance. 2025 - (Image Description: Close-up view of a bronze-toned winged sculpture suspended against a yellow-green wall, casting layered shadows that emphasise its curved form and textured surface under directional light).
Exhibition installation (detail) at VSSL Studio - Biolytic Daughter - A collaboration between Bassam Issa Al-Sabah and Jennifer Mehigan. Photographic documentation by Marco Berardi & Baiba Sprance. 2025 - (Image Description: Sculptural installation featuring a bronze-toned head with an open mouth holding a cigarette, positioned on a wooden shelf bracketed to a yellow-green wall, partially framed by a painted panel on the left side).About Bassam Issa Al-Sabah
Bassam Issa Al-Sabah is an artist working with digital animation, painting, sculpture and textiles. his installations interrogate the intersection of fantasy and trauma, employing speculative worlds as a lens through which to explore the mechanisms of memory and identity formation. Frequently drawing on the visual lexicon of video games, anime, and popular culture, constructing alternative realities that function as both a means of escape and critical commentary. These Surrealistic spaces are often juxtaposed with stark depictions of violence and destruction, their landscapes and fragmented narratives mirroring the dissonant nature of recollection and the complex processes of self-reconstruction.At the core of his practice is an investigation into how digital culture and virtual environments mediate experiences of trauma, displacement, and loss. These constructed worlds provide a framework for reimagining personal and collective histories, where the fantastical serves not only as a refuge but as a site of confrontation
Recent solo exhibitions include Uncensored Lilac, in collaboration with Jennifer Mehigan at Silent Green, Transmediale, Berlin (2024), IT'S DANGEROUS TO GO ALONE TAKE THIS!, The Douglas Hyde Gallery of Contemporary Art, Dublin (2022), I AM ERROR, Gasworks, London (2021), and De La Warr Pavilion, Sussex (2022).
www.bassamissa.xyz
Exhibition installation (detail) at VSSL Studio - Biolytic Daughter - A collaboration between Bassam Issa Al-Sabah and Jennifer Mehigan. Photographic documentation by Marco Berardi & Baiba Sprance. 2025 - (Image Description: Sculptural artwork depicting an elongated bronze-toned hand with long, pointed nails emerging from a yellow-green wall, with a small red berry delicately balanced on its fingertip, illuminated by a video projection in the background).
Exhibition installation (detail) at VSSL Studio - Biolytic Daughter - A collaboration between Bassam Issa Al-Sabah and Jennifer Mehigan. Photographic documentation by Marco Berardi & Baiba Sprance. 2025 - (Image Description: Installation detail showing the silhouette of large sculptural forms of horse ears cast against a yellow-green wall, with a small winged bronze sculpture suspended on chains, partially illuminated by soft projected light).
About Jennifer Mehigan
Jennifer Mehigan's prints and paintings fuse diverse media and sources, including 3D scans of her garden, images of plants growing on the graves of strange Irish women, the archive of Victorian portrait photographer Lady Clementina Hawarden, the four-dimensional drawings by the Cork-born mathematician Alicia Boole, and an encrypted codex known as the Voynich manuscript. Using paint, inkjet, graphics cards, neural networks, pearl powder and gel, her works blend new and old methods of making and processing the world – a relationship the artist views as a ‘strained mother-daughter bond’. Mehigan’s wider practice also incorporates CGI, sculpture, filmmaking, perfumery, writing, parties, artificial intelligence and horticulture, deploying sensory experience to explore queerness and femininity.Mehigan regularly creates work in collaboration with artist Bassam Issa Al-Sabah and and is a former member of Temporary Pleasure, a rave architecture collective. Her PhD research at Belfast School of Art speculates about Ireland’s 'abstract' and anorexic women after the Famine, revisiting isolation, illegibility and ‘image hunger’ in the age of techno-surveillance.
Recent exhibitions include Uncensored Lilac, with Bassam Issa Al-Sabah, transmediale studio, Berlin (2024); 4D MOUND NETWORK, An Chultúrlann McAdam Ó Fiaich, Belfast; HERE COMES LOVE, Kerlin Gallery, Dublin (both 2023); Nightbloom Chokehold at Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin (2022) and Creamatorium 2 at transmediale, Berlin (2021). She is based in Limerick.
www.default.garden
Exhibition Posters, 2025, A collaboration between Bassam Issa Al-Sabah and Jennifer Mehigan - (Image Description: The poster depicts a fantastical, androgynous figure with pointed ears and shimmering skin, emerging from dark reflective water alongside a horse. The figure holds a glowing pink heart-shaped object, casting soft light onto their chest and hair. Behind them, jagged rocky formations rise against a stark black mythical background. At the bottom of the image, bold white lettering reads; Biolytic Daughter).
Exhibition Posters, 2025, A collaboration between Bassam Issa Al-Sabah and Jennifer Mehigan - (Image Description: The artwork features a surreal humanoid figure with glossy black curved horns, elongated ears, and sharp white fangs emerging from an oversized mouth. Their skin has a pale, fleshy texture with protruding ridges along the shoulders, while long black hair frames their face. The background is a flat grey, overlaid with bold white silhouettes of flowers and plants. Above the figure, gothic white text spells; Biolytic Daughter).
About carefuffle
Carefuffle is a disabled and queer-led working group rooted in the principles of care, interconnectedness, authorship and social justice.We are dedicated to celebrating disabled and queer talent and genius. Our commitment to challenging the ableist narratives and socio-cultural exclusion comes from the belief in the wholeness of disability and access as a collective joy and shared responsibility towards a liberatory future .
When we say “Working Group,” we honour the community and everyone who has an impact on what we do and how we think, as well as the lineages of Disability Justice and Crip community wisdom that make our work possible. They generously share their wisdom, knowledge, and skills with us, profoundly influencing our practices and thought processes. Without them, Carefuffle would not exist.
www.care-fuffle.com
Access Information for the Exhibition
The exhibition is free to attend.
(See Visual Story for more detail.)
The toilet includes:
The toilet door is heavy and opens manually outward. VSSL team are happy to provide assistance.
Getting Here
- VSSL is on Resolution Way, on the ground floor of an apartment building called Resolution Studios, opposite the commercial arches.
- It is part of the creative hub Enclave, which includes other galleries and creative spaces.
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ADDRESS: VSSL Studio, Enclave 50, Resolution Way. London SE8 4AL
- View on Google Maps
- VISUAL STORY: How to Get to VSSL (PDF available)
Step-free access
- Step-free access to VSSL is available via Tidemill Way
- Please check the Visual Story for Directional photos of the route
Parking and Drop-Off Points
- Accessible parking: The nearest accessible parking is on Frankham Street (Pay & Display / Parking Boulevard).
It is a tree-lined road with spaces on both sides.
The walk from Frankham Street to VSSL takes around 4 minutes via Tidemill Way. - Drop-off point: The nearest car drop-off point is on Tidemill Way, behind Deptford Lounge.
From here, there is a short, step-free route through the car park directly to VSSL.
Public Transport
VSSL is well connected by public transport.- Train: The nearest rail station is Deptford Station, about 4 minutes’ walk along a flat route. The station has step-free access.
- DLR: Deptford Bridge Station is about 10 minutes’ walk along a flat route. It also has step-free access.
- Bus: The closest stop is Wavelengths on Deptford Church Street.
Only bus 47 serves this stop. It runs between Bellingham (Catford Bus Garage) and Shoreditch, passing through Lewisham, Deptford, Canada Water, Bermondsey, London Bridge, and Liverpool Street Station.
(See Visual Story for more detail.)
STATION PICK UP
VSSL team are happy to pick you up from the station (Deptford Train Station, Deptford Bridge DLR, Wavelenghts Bus Stop). To arrange a station pick up please email us on mine@vssl-studio.org two days in advance. Please note that we can only arrange a pick-up at 11:45 am during the exhibition days (Thursday, Friday and Saturday) as we will only have one invigilator for each day and they need to be present in the space.CAPTIONS AND ALTERNATIVE FORMATS
- The film in the exhibition will always include open captions.
- Exhibition texts are available in Plain English, Large Print, and Audio Recording formats in the venue and online.
VSSL STUDIO Space Information
- The exhibition space measures 3.95 metres wide, 6 metres long, and 4 metres high.
- The entrance door is 1.70 metres wide, heavy, and opens manually inward.
- Please ask a member of staff for assistance if needed.
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Lighting: Dim lights throughout, with video projector and soft yellow lighting.
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Noise / Volume: The video will play at mid volume.
- Temperature: We have one heater in the space so it’s warmer than outside but still cool.
Sensory content
Noise:- 00:00 – 00:35: Loud, high-pitched shrilling sound
- 02:49 – 02:53: High-pitched shrilling sound
- 19:36 – 20:17: High-pitched, raspy metallic sound
- 24:05 – 24:25: High-pitched glitch-like shrill sound
- 00:23 – 00:33: Flashing images
- 24:11 – 24:27: Glitching white-noise images
Seating & WALKING CANES
Two types of seating are available:- A single bench
- Chairs with backs
- There are 2 walking canes available for visitors who would like extra support.
Support Animals
- Support animals are welcome.
- Drinking bowls will be provided.
COVID Safety
- The exhibition space is medium-sized (3.95m × 6m × 4m), which may limit air circulation when crowded.
- We provide N95 masks and hand sanitiser at the entrance.
- We encourage visitors to test before attending and to wear a face mask during the exhibition.
Scent-Conscious Space
- To help keep VSSL safe for everyone, please avoid wearing perfume or scented products whenever possible.
Toilets
- There is one toilet located along the Resolution Way fenced path, two doors down from VSSL.
- It is gender-neutral and wheelchair accessible.
The toilet includes:
- One hinged rail and one vertical rail beside the toilet
- Two vertical rails by the sink
- An emergency cord that reaches the floor (on the right side of the toilet)
The toilet door is heavy and opens manually outward. VSSL team are happy to provide assistance.
Smoking Area
- Smoking areas will be clearly marked.
- Please do not smoke near the entrance to VSSL.
Emergency Exit and Assembly Point
- Emergency exits are clearly marked throughout the space.
- The Designated Assembly Point is in the Tidemill Way car park, near the gates.
- In case of emergency, VSSL staff will guide visitors safely to the assembly point.
Credits
BASSAM ISSA AL-SABAH AND JENNIFER MEHIGAN: BIOLYTIC DAUGHTER as part of ENTANGLEMENTS OF THE APOCALYPSE is co-curated by Mine Kaplangı, Benjamin Sebastian, Joseph Morgan Schofield and Ash McNaughton. The programme is made possible with public funding from the National Lottery and Arts Council England and Cultúr Éireann (Culture Ireland). This exhibition is supported by Carefuffle who are assisting the VSSL team and the artists to make the exhibition more accessible.
artist in Residence
Untitled image from project Abscission by Dani d’Emilia. Photographed by Gabz404. Brazil. 2023 - (IMAGE DESCRIPTION: A topless person lies on a patch of grass, shown from shoulders to hips. They have healing top surgery scars across their chest and a circular geometric tattoo in the center of the upper chest. Wearing white medical gloves, they hold a large curved amethyst crystal cluster against their abdomen. Their arms rest slightly outward on the grass, revealing additional tattoos on their forearms).Between 6th and 13th December 2025, Dani d’Emilia will be artist in residence at VSSL Studio as part of our current programme, Entanglements of the Apocalypse.
Dani’s work deviates from binary logics across both gender and broader modern-colonial paradigms. Their practice explores performance-pedagogy as a site for political practices of healing. This art-life work investigates pathways to metabolic intimacy as an antidote to the illusion of separability.
Dani’s work deviates from binary logics across both gender and broader modern-colonial paradigms. Their practice explores performance-pedagogy as a site for political practices of healing. This art-life work investigates pathways to metabolic intimacy as an antidote to the illusion of separability.
Rooted in Dani’s experiences of hysterectomy and neutral mastectomy, thier ongoing research project;
Abscission aligns personal processes of release with larger systemic rhythms, exploring how letting go can be both an act of regeneration and a threshold for transforming broader relational fields and reactivating visceral response_ability.
Abscission aligns personal processes of release with larger systemic rhythms, exploring how letting go can be both an act of regeneration and a threshold for transforming broader relational fields and reactivating visceral response_ability.
Untitled image from project Abscission by Dani d’Emilia. Photographed by Gabz404. Brazil. 2023 - (IMAGE DESCRIPTION: Two hands gently arrange large, folded pieces of skin-like, flesh-toned material with visible wrinkles and natural texture, laid on top of a banana leaf. The pieces are surrounded by a semicircle of pale blue orchids with pink and purple veining. The arrangement rests outdoors on green grass, creating a contrast between the organic, bodily appearance of the material and the decorative flowers).
About dani d’emilia
Dani d’Emilia is an artist and educator working at the intersections of performance, radical pedagogy, social justice, and eco-relational care.
A member of Gesturing Towards Decolonial Futures (CA/BR) since 2017 and formerly of La Pocha Nostra (US/MX, 2011–16), Dani teaches and collaborates on projects internationally, exploring how the arts can support ways of staying with the trouble and resisting disenchantment.
Their practice seeks to nourish cognitive, affective, and relational vitality amid deepening social and ecological crises.
www.danidemilia.com
Credits
DANI D’EMILIA as part of ENTANGLEMENTS OF THE APOCALYPSE is co-curated by Mine Kaplangı, Benjamin Sebastian, Joseph Morgan Schofield and Ash McNaughton. Entanglements Of The Apocalypse has been made possible with public funding from the National Lottery and Arts Council England.
Come Hell or High Femmes: The Dolls Rise - performed at The Horse Hospital (London). Produced by VSSL Studio. Video stills by Studio MaBa (Baiba Sprance & Marco Berardi). 2025.
In Thomas's new solo project - COME HELL OR HIGH FEMMES: THE DOLLS RISE - a three part film and multimedia performance, Thomas charts a post-apocalyptic geography.
Her world is lush and verdant; the artist, bathed in a sky blue dress of tulle, wanders across babbling brooks, oceans, and atop hills of fertile land.
Thomas imagines a time where the dolls — a word that, loosely, means a trans femmes so flawless and unbound they are no longer considered real — have survived a mass extinction.
Her world is lush and verdant; the artist, bathed in a sky blue dress of tulle, wanders across babbling brooks, oceans, and atop hills of fertile land.
Thomas imagines a time where the dolls — a word that, loosely, means a trans femmes so flawless and unbound they are no longer considered real — have survived a mass extinction.
Come Hell or High Femmes: The Dolls Rise - performed at The Horse Hospital (London). Produced by VSSL Studio. Video documentation by Studio MaBa (Baiba Sprance & Marco Berardi). 2025.
Why are dolls the only ones left? Perhaps, it is because trans femmes (often, but not always) are forged in nocturnality, where beauty and intelligence must learn to supersede time and space. Thomas reclaims what it means to be black in nature, forging new ways to exist in peace, joy, and healing in relation to the American landscape.
The work moves through sound, light, poetry, dance, and music as forms of resistance and healing. The choreography is based on queering landscapes, camouflage, and metamorphosis as modes of survival and transcendence for queer and trans people.
The work moves through sound, light, poetry, dance, and music as forms of resistance and healing. The choreography is based on queering landscapes, camouflage, and metamorphosis as modes of survival and transcendence for queer and trans people.
Documentation of the audience screening of: 'Come Hell or High Femmes: The Era of the Dolls - A film trilogy' at the performance of; ‘Come Hell or High Femmes: The Dolls Rise’ - at The Horse Hospital (London). Produced by VSSL Studio. Video documentation by Studio MaBa (Baiba Sprance & Marco Berardi). 2025.
Booking Information
Wednesday 13th August, 7pm at the Horse Hospital
︎︎︎ RSVPs essential - Book tickets HERE
Set in the year 2666, following a mass extinction of most human life, Come Hell or High Femmes: The Dolls Rise explores - in Thomas’ words - a “postapocalyptic world where black transfemmes have survived and are building a new universe.” - Joshua Chambers
Come Hell or High Femmes: The Dolls Rise - performed at The Horse Hospital (London). Produced by VSSL Studio. Video stills by Studio MaBa (Baiba Sprance & Marco Berardi). 2025.
Come Hell or High Femmes: The Dolls Rise - performed at The Horse Hospital (London). Produced by VSSL Studio. Video stills by Studio MaBa (Baiba Sprance & Marco Berardi). 2025.
About Keioui Keijaun Thomas
Keioui Keijaun Thomas (b.1989) is a New York-based artist. She creates live performance and multimedia installations that address the multifaceted realms of Black identity formation, encompassing affective, material and economic dimensions. Through a captivating fusion of sculpture and performance, the work explores the transient nature of the “doll”— a trans femme so flawless and unbound she is no longer considered real—as both a work in progress and a formidable force of nature.
Utilizing an array of materials such as paper, hair, sugar, rubber, tape, acrylic, water, enamel and skin to create tableaus that are intricately intertwined with her own body. Her performances combine rhapsodic layers of live and recorded voice, slipping between various modes of address, to explore the pleasures and pressures of dependency, care, and support. By centering self and communal care in real-time, Thomas’ practice aims to build bridges of understanding and community.
Thomas has presented work both nationally and internationally. She earned her Masters degree from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and her BFA with Honors from the School of Visual Arts in New York.
See more of her recent work HERE
Credits
COME HELL OR HIGH FEMMES: THE DOLLS RISE as part of ENTANGLEMENTS OF THE APOCALYPSE is co-curated by Mine Kaplangı, Benjamin Sebastian, Joseph Morgan Schofield and Ash McNaughton. The programme is made possible with public funding from the National Lottery and Arts Council England.
Live performance by
Catherine Hoffmann
RSVP: 3pm, 5pm & 7:30pm - Saturday 12th of July - at VSSL Studio
Documentation of Wormhole Of Our Formation by Catherine Hoffmann at VSSL Studio as part of Deptford X. Photographed by Eda Sancakdar.
Part absurdist ritual attempting control, part elemental exorcism, WORMHOLE OF OUR FORMATION is a vertiginous road trip through collapse – mental, environmental, economic – driven by unyielding text through warped music and howling storms.
A raw, hallucinatory performance that tears through the psychic wreckage of Breakdown Britain. This is a ride into the fragmentation of the self as Tetley tea bags pile up and scrambled eggs congeal. In debt and displaced, Hoffmann charts a personal odyssey across red-alert storm zones, B&Bs, motorway shutdowns, and the disorienting landscapes of austerity and ageing.
A raw, hallucinatory performance that tears through the psychic wreckage of Breakdown Britain. This is a ride into the fragmentation of the self as Tetley tea bags pile up and scrambled eggs congeal. In debt and displaced, Hoffmann charts a personal odyssey across red-alert storm zones, B&Bs, motorway shutdowns, and the disorienting landscapes of austerity and ageing.
Armed with a wind machine, searing text, sonic chaos and ritual tremors, Hoffmann conjures a storm from the inside out.
No solace. No resolve.
Just ridiculous and horrifying monotony until a fissure – shuddering open – towards possible release.
A fizzing, visceral embodiment of crisis and catharsis, Wormhole persists. It shakes you. Bleeds. Trembles. Collapses. Re-forms.
No solace. No resolve.
Just ridiculous and horrifying monotony until a fissure – shuddering open – towards possible release.
A fizzing, visceral embodiment of crisis and catharsis, Wormhole persists. It shakes you. Bleeds. Trembles. Collapses. Re-forms.
Documentation of Wormhole Of Our Formation by Catherine Hoffmann at VSSL Studio as part of Deptford X. Photographed by Eda Sancakdar.
Documentation of Wormhole Of Our Formation by Catherine Hoffmann at VSSL Studio as part of Deptford X. Photographed by Eda Sancakdar.
Booking Information
Saturday12th July, 15.00, 17.00 & 19.30 at VSSL Studio
during the opening weekend of Deptford X.
︎︎︎ RSVPs essential - Book tickets HERE
"No sweeteners offered. This is how it is. No relief." - Diarmuid Hester
Documentation of Wormhole Of Our Formation by Catherine Hoffmann at VSSL Studio as part of Deptford X. Photographed by Eda Sancakdar.
Documentation of Wormhole Of Our Formation by Catherine Hoffmann at VSSL Studio as part of Deptford X. Photographed by Eda Sancakdar.
Buy Artworks
As compliment to the live iteration of WORMHOLE OF OUR FORMATION, Hoffmann has produced a series of six limited edition, A5 prints - available for purchase throughout the ENTANGLEMENTS OF THE APOCALYPSE programme.
Prints 1 to 6 (pictured above) are priced at £130 ea. For all sales enquiries please contact the artist directly HERE
About Catherine Hoffmann
Described as an elemental weather system Catherine takes an interdisciplinary approach to her work using text, music, choreography, video and participation - sitting in between live art, cabaret and performance. In a DIY approach and usually with absurdism she tackles personal, autobiographical material to shine a light on social issues.
Most of her work could be seen as some kind of humiliating act, revealing aspects such as shame, guilt, poverty, loss, gynaecological and mental health. She ventures into vulnerable terrain using humour and irreverence as a tool, to open up dialogue, embracing the desire for collective healing in our challenging contemporary lives.
Mainly creating solo shows as well as interactive intimate works, she also collaborates with Florence Peake and has shown in festivals, theatres, art galleries, cabaret events, on night buses, in bars and clubs throughout the UK and Europe.
In 2023 she created an immersive version of ‘Wormhole of our Formation’ using VR 360 film at UCA in Canterbury supported by ACE, the Hi3 Network, Wysing Arts centre and Cambridge Junction. In 2022 she toured ‘Cyst-er Act’ to Germany, to Summerhall at the Edinburgh fringe festival and the Southbank centre. In 2017/18 she toured the UK with ‘Free Lunch with the Stench Wench’ – a solo exploring shame in relation to class and poverty. Her texts ‘Whatever happened to the Glory Days’? And ‘Ten tips on being Feckless and Poor..’ are printed by LADA and Unbound books.
www.cathoffmann.com
Credits
WORMHOLE OF OUR FORMATION - as part of Entanglements of the Apochalypse - has been made possible with support from Wysing Arts Centre, Cambridge Junction, Arts Council England, Battersea Arts Centre, and Hi3 Network with Screen South. In collaboration with VSSL Studio and Deptford X.
Created by: Catherine Hoffmann
Dramaturg: Eirini Kartsaki
Pearled neck brace and dress by: Lara Buffard
Choreographic Support: Florence Peake
Additional Sound Support: Lottie Poulet, Geoffrey Chambers
Lights: Marty Langthorne
Production Assistants: Ash McNaughton, Mine Kaplangi
Looking for the Rain written by: James Gabriel Leo Lavelle, Jack Leonard, Mark Lanegan, Matthew Puffet
Vocals: Catherine Hoffmann
Thanks to: Tink Flaherty, Katy Baird, Daniel Oliver, Eve Stainton, Gavin Roberts, Jules Deering, Ella Gamble, Sahara Huang, Tim Spooner, Benjamin Sebastian
DREAMING ALTERNATIVE WAYS OF EDUCATION WHILE WITNESSING APOCALYPSES (a gathering)
Private Event: Thursday the 25th of September at VSSL Studio.
Image courtesy of the Rose Choreographic School.As part of Entanglements Of The Apocalypse, VSSL Studio will host a private gathering (not open to the public) with and for the current cohort of the Rose Choreographic School.
This curated roundtable brings together a diverse array of creative/artistic-researchers - to share practices, knowledges, and speculations at the intersection of apocalyptic thinking, artistic enquiry, and experimental pedagogy.
Leading into and during the gathering, Dreaming Alternative Ways of Education While Witnessing Apocalypses will serve as both a prompt and invitation - asking how we might learn jotherwise, in other ways, while the world continues through ongoing cycles of collapse and renewal.
This curated roundtable brings together a diverse array of creative/artistic-researchers - to share practices, knowledges, and speculations at the intersection of apocalyptic thinking, artistic enquiry, and experimental pedagogy.
Leading into and during the gathering, Dreaming Alternative Ways of Education While Witnessing Apocalypses will serve as both a prompt and invitation - asking how we might learn jotherwise, in other ways, while the world continues through ongoing cycles of collapse and renewal.
Through conversation, listening, and imaginative exchange, the session foregrounds practices of embodied research, communal dreaming, and the weaving of counter-narratives.
Together, the VSSL team and Rose Choreographic School cohort will consider how education might transform under pressure: beyond institutions, beyond certainty, and within the entangled temporalities of multiple apocalypses.
This gathering is not open to the public, but its resonances will inform future ways in which both VSSL Studio and the Rose Choreographic School cohort continue to think, make, and share in uncertain times.
Together, the VSSL team and Rose Choreographic School cohort will consider how education might transform under pressure: beyond institutions, beyond certainty, and within the entangled temporalities of multiple apocalypses.
This gathering is not open to the public, but its resonances will inform future ways in which both VSSL Studio and the Rose Choreographic School cohort continue to think, make, and share in uncertain times.
Booking Information
Thursday the 25th of September at VSSL Studio
︎︎︎ This is a private event, not open to the public
"...the focus is on coming together as a community of artist researchers to discover the conditions we need for speculation and articulation" - Rose Choreographic School
Image courtesy of the Rose Choreographic School.
Image courtesy of the Rose Choreographic School.
About Rose Choreographic School
Rose Choreographic School is an experimental research and pedagogy project. We support a cohort of 13 artists to explore their singular choreographic enquiries and to collectively imagine a school through which knowledges and practices can be developed and shared. There is no set curriculum or syllabus, and no predetermined outcome; the focus is on coming together as a community of artist researchers to discover the conditions we need for speculation and articulation. Each cycle of the School lasts two years, during which we offer access to studio spaces, mentoring and a research budget. The Artistic Faculty for this first cycle are Alesandra Seutin, Trajal Harrell and William Forsythe and they will invite engagement with their own research concerns and practices. The current cohort have collectively written a statement in solidarity with Palestine. It can be read in English or Arabic on our Publications page.
www.rosechoreographicschool.com
Credits
DREAMING ALTERNATIVE WAYS OF EDUCATION WHILE WITNESSING APOCALYPSES (A GATHERING) as part of ENTANGLEMENTS OF THE APOCALYPSE is co-curated by Mine Kaplangı, Benjamin Sebastian, Joseph Morgan Schofield and Ash McNaughton. The programme is made possible with public funding from the National Lottery and Arts Council England.
Holding The Shadow While Calling Back The Light
A solo, touring exhibition by Benjamin SebastianLaunch Event:
6-9pm - Friday 31st January
Exhibition Run:
Thursday - Saturday, 12-5pm
31st of January - 28th of February
(Closed Sunday - Wednesday)
“This predominantly new body of work by Benjamin Sebastian confronts their ancestral implication in violent structures of settler-colonialism, while holding space for a spiritually expansive understanding of our relationship to the world around us and the forces that shape it through multiple forms of coloniality. This exhibition reveals a visual language of stitch, pattern, symbolism and hybridity, developed to unravel complex personal and political histories...” - Jane Scarth
ABOUT THE EXHIBITION:
This timely exhibition of works by artist Benjamin Sebastian (b. 1980, Cairns, Australia. Lives and works in London, UK) is their largest solo presentation in the UK to date, consisting predominantly of new digital collage and textile works, soft sculpture and installation, as well as performance art documentation & relics. Holding The Shadow While Calling Back The Light traces Sebastian’s development as a collage, assemblage, installation & performance artist, sculptor and craftsperson - while foregrounding their current engagement with decoloniality; unpacking aspects of their settler heritage while reflecting on neurodivergent & nonbinary identity.
Sebastian’s oeuvre has often been described as; “...a constellation of mirrors; reflecting aspects of the body, times, spaces & relationships I (have) inhabit(ed) – or – as world-making experiments, manifested through intuitive, erotic and esoteric methodologies." Through such ‘constellation of mirrors’, Sebastian engages viewers in a multifocal examination of coloniality - acknowledging their position within historic colonizing processes (settler heritage) while also holding space for their position as a colonized subject (neurodivergent and nonbinary) - enacting a kind of mirror switch, whereby Sebastian’s personal histories and embodied experiences, become a collective platform, enabling wider social reflection regarding each individual’s position within systems of power, domination, liberation and resilience.
Holding The Shadow While Calling Back The Light is not intended to make sense, yet rather, as a process of sense-making - where hybrid identities, iconoclastic gestures, patchwork (visual) languages and amorphously gendered entities diffuse settled narratives - opening up spaces of unknowing, encouraging moments of contemplation, critical reflection and visioning in relation to the interconnected complexities of our contemporary, social and political landscapes.
> Extended exhibition text by Jane Scarth
> Read Benjamin’s recent interview with QX Magazine HERE
> Read Benjamin’s recent interview with To Do List London HERE
> List of works
> Extended exhibition text by Jane Scarth
> Read Benjamin’s recent interview with QX Magazine HERE
> Read Benjamin’s recent interview with To Do List London HERE
> List of works
ABOUT BENJAMIN:
Benjamin Sebastian (1980 AUS/UK) is a trans-disciplinary visual artist and curator living in London (UK). Their work spans performance, sculpture, curation, video, text, installation, drawing & new media - rooted in processes of bricolage, assemblage, collage, ritual & DIY cultural production. Through harmonizing nonbinary perspectives, neurodivergent cognition and decolonial practice, Sebastian weaves nascent narratives into existence, offering alternative ways of remembering, being here-and-now, and charting pathways to futures yet formed. They hold a BA Fine Art HONS (1st Class) from the University of Lincoln and MA Curating Art and Public Programmes through Whitechapel Gallery. Sebastian’s continued research interests include; artificial/synthetic intelligence, occult practices, queer ecologies, decolonialism, transhumanism, contemporary performance & visual art. Sebastian is a founding director of both ]performance s p a c e [ and VSSL Studio and their affiliated projects have received funding from Arts Council England, the British Council, Greater London Authority, Creative Folkestone, Kent County Council, Inspire Lewisham, Roger De Haan Charitable Trust and Live Art U.K. as well as other charities and local authorities. Some of their most recent activities include: curating Archipelago: Visions in Orbit at Whitechapel Gallery, Performing at the opening of Pretty Doomed at Ugly Duck (2023), exhibition of Benjamin Sebastian + Alicia Radage at VSSL Studio (2023) curating FACET at VSSL Studio (2023), guest curating the Intersect series at the Live Art Development Agency (2023), speaking on the symposium; Art, Memory & Place at Turner Contemporary (2022), as well as performance of their live installation 3 Reflections² as part of FUTURERITUAL at the Institute of Contemporary Art, London (2022).
*The Gimuy Walubara Yidinji and the Yirrganydji peoples are the traditional custodians of Cairns and surrounding district. Gimuy is the traditional place name for the area Cairns City now occupies. Sebastian wishes to pay respect to the Gimuy Walubara Yidinji and Yirrganydji Elders, both past and present, and extend that respect to all Indigenous Australians.
www.benjamin-sebastian.com
@benjaminsebastian
Benjamin Sebastian (1980 AUS/UK) is a trans-disciplinary visual artist and curator living in London (UK). Their work spans performance, sculpture, curation, video, text, installation, drawing & new media - rooted in processes of bricolage, assemblage, collage, ritual & DIY cultural production. Through harmonizing nonbinary perspectives, neurodivergent cognition and decolonial practice, Sebastian weaves nascent narratives into existence, offering alternative ways of remembering, being here-and-now, and charting pathways to futures yet formed. They hold a BA Fine Art HONS (1st Class) from the University of Lincoln and MA Curating Art and Public Programmes through Whitechapel Gallery. Sebastian’s continued research interests include; artificial/synthetic intelligence, occult practices, queer ecologies, decolonialism, transhumanism, contemporary performance & visual art. Sebastian is a founding director of both ]performance s p a c e [ and VSSL Studio and their affiliated projects have received funding from Arts Council England, the British Council, Greater London Authority, Creative Folkestone, Kent County Council, Inspire Lewisham, Roger De Haan Charitable Trust and Live Art U.K. as well as other charities and local authorities. Some of their most recent activities include: curating Archipelago: Visions in Orbit at Whitechapel Gallery, Performing at the opening of Pretty Doomed at Ugly Duck (2023), exhibition of Benjamin Sebastian + Alicia Radage at VSSL Studio (2023) curating FACET at VSSL Studio (2023), guest curating the Intersect series at the Live Art Development Agency (2023), speaking on the symposium; Art, Memory & Place at Turner Contemporary (2022), as well as performance of their live installation 3 Reflections² as part of FUTURERITUAL at the Institute of Contemporary Art, London (2022).
*The Gimuy Walubara Yidinji and the Yirrganydji peoples are the traditional custodians of Cairns and surrounding district. Gimuy is the traditional place name for the area Cairns City now occupies. Sebastian wishes to pay respect to the Gimuy Walubara Yidinji and Yirrganydji Elders, both past and present, and extend that respect to all Indigenous Australians.
www.benjamin-sebastian.com
@benjaminsebastian
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