Holding The Shadow While Calling Back The Light
Extended exhibition by Jane Scarth
‘Un-doing Dee’s Work’ installation view at Herbert Read Gallery, Canterbury (2024). Image courtesy of the artist.
This exhibition brings together work spanning over a decade of practice, with a brand new body of work alongside three sets of existing artworks. All the pieces present are in dialogue with one another to reveal enduring themes across Sebastian’s work - shadow and light, creation and destruction, esotericism, queer subjectivities and colonial heritages.
At the centre of Holding The Shadow While Calling Back The Light are three Entities, other-than-human sentinels surrounding a fragmented seven-pointed star - an emblem taken from the Australian flag. This star represents a deeply colonial principle - a point for each of the federated Australian states and territories, plus a seventh for any future states or territories yet to be named. An open ended possibility for settler-colonialism to claim and abscise more land, an implication that there is yet more violence still to come. The triplicate of non-binary Entities are constructed from a patchwork quilt of garments once belonging to the artist’s mother and fringed with black feathers. As guardians, their task is to keep watch over this dismantled colonial symbol - a false star - to ensure it will never again be re-formed.
Each diamond shaped star fragment is constructed from calico, a material used by Sebastian throughout the new body of work. Not only was calico a British colonial export from occupied India, but prior to their migration to Australia, Sebastian’s family lived in Oldham, one of the largest cotton milling towns in Britain. The fragments are adorned with prints of natural objects associated with transmutation or rebirth - shifting from one state of being to another - for example, a shedded snake skin, a chrysalis, a crow’s egg.
We encounter the Entities again in three wall based works where we are invited to study their forms more closely. These figures are other worldly beings from the spirit realm, who Sebastian has encountered and related with throughout their life. Crucially, these beings exist beyond gender, with forms that hold multiple appendages as well as openings. The geometric, patterned background of these works are formed from an abstracted British postage stamp bearing the profile of Queen Elizabeth II, one of several acts of iconoclasm appearing throughout the exhibition.
Presented alongside are seven textile works each constructed from a combination of calico and a deconstructed nylon Australian flag. These pieces are embellished with images of hybrid beings - homoerotic male bodies with heads of birds, snakes and butterflies, fusing together species native of Britain and Australia. Another piece in this series titled The Seemingly Innocent Are Not Without Danger features a family photo depicting the artist's grandfather surrounded by his sons, claiming and taming ‘their’ land, after their assisted migration from Oldham (UK) to Queensland shortly after the end of the 2nd world war. This government-sponsored scheme to encourage British migrants formed a significant part of the ‘White Australia’ set of policies, designed to engineer the erasure of the Indigenous population.
Complimenting these new works are three sets of earlier artworks. A series of four digital collages printed onto archival aquatints; Dead Queer Sex Fag (2023), which combine vintage gay porn with Victorian mechanical diagrams and fauna documentation. These works allude again to Sebastian’s family history within the industrial heritage of the north of England, juxtaposed with queer bodies. As the Victorians drove mechanical industrialisation they also applied a regime of order and categorisation - to name, to define, is to control and to oppress. As Foucault reminds us, the term ‘homosexual’ is a Victorian invention.
Sebastian’s expansive performance practice is presented across just two works. We encounter a large-scale diptych, photographic documentation of Phoenix (2013) in which the artist emerges from a burning paper structure. This work embodies the ritualistic power of fire, paired with the symbolism of death, transformation and emergence.
Alongside this, 3 Reflections² (2022) is represented through a single performance relic and video documentation of the three-hour durational performance presented at the Institute of Contemporary Art, London. In this work, Sebastian circulates between three stations, moving through a series of actions with props, including a mirrorball fetish hood and a crystal, chrome and chain-adorned body harness which disperses refracted light throughout the performance space. The power of words voiced - such as; ‘I called out and all that I heard was the echo of a star.’ - and the symbolism of light and shadow permeating this work provide a portal through which to enter many of the intertwined themes of additional works in this exhibition and beyond.
In Sebastian’s own words, ‘I experience the making of art as an act of (practical) magic. The parallels between artistic and occult practices are obvious to me, and I am fascinated by the potential of those practices in creating something from nothing – of drawing that which is yet to exist, into the physical material world. I understand such parallels as explicit links between not only occult and artistic workings, yet also neurodivergent and queer(ed) experiences and actioning of life. All are processes of manifesting something-not-yet-here/known.’
At the centre of Holding The Shadow While Calling Back The Light are three Entities, other-than-human sentinels surrounding a fragmented seven-pointed star - an emblem taken from the Australian flag. This star represents a deeply colonial principle - a point for each of the federated Australian states and territories, plus a seventh for any future states or territories yet to be named. An open ended possibility for settler-colonialism to claim and abscise more land, an implication that there is yet more violence still to come. The triplicate of non-binary Entities are constructed from a patchwork quilt of garments once belonging to the artist’s mother and fringed with black feathers. As guardians, their task is to keep watch over this dismantled colonial symbol - a false star - to ensure it will never again be re-formed.
Each diamond shaped star fragment is constructed from calico, a material used by Sebastian throughout the new body of work. Not only was calico a British colonial export from occupied India, but prior to their migration to Australia, Sebastian’s family lived in Oldham, one of the largest cotton milling towns in Britain. The fragments are adorned with prints of natural objects associated with transmutation or rebirth - shifting from one state of being to another - for example, a shedded snake skin, a chrysalis, a crow’s egg.
We encounter the Entities again in three wall based works where we are invited to study their forms more closely. These figures are other worldly beings from the spirit realm, who Sebastian has encountered and related with throughout their life. Crucially, these beings exist beyond gender, with forms that hold multiple appendages as well as openings. The geometric, patterned background of these works are formed from an abstracted British postage stamp bearing the profile of Queen Elizabeth II, one of several acts of iconoclasm appearing throughout the exhibition.
Presented alongside are seven textile works each constructed from a combination of calico and a deconstructed nylon Australian flag. These pieces are embellished with images of hybrid beings - homoerotic male bodies with heads of birds, snakes and butterflies, fusing together species native of Britain and Australia. Another piece in this series titled The Seemingly Innocent Are Not Without Danger features a family photo depicting the artist's grandfather surrounded by his sons, claiming and taming ‘their’ land, after their assisted migration from Oldham (UK) to Queensland shortly after the end of the 2nd world war. This government-sponsored scheme to encourage British migrants formed a significant part of the ‘White Australia’ set of policies, designed to engineer the erasure of the Indigenous population.
Complimenting these new works are three sets of earlier artworks. A series of four digital collages printed onto archival aquatints; Dead Queer Sex Fag (2023), which combine vintage gay porn with Victorian mechanical diagrams and fauna documentation. These works allude again to Sebastian’s family history within the industrial heritage of the north of England, juxtaposed with queer bodies. As the Victorians drove mechanical industrialisation they also applied a regime of order and categorisation - to name, to define, is to control and to oppress. As Foucault reminds us, the term ‘homosexual’ is a Victorian invention.
Sebastian’s expansive performance practice is presented across just two works. We encounter a large-scale diptych, photographic documentation of Phoenix (2013) in which the artist emerges from a burning paper structure. This work embodies the ritualistic power of fire, paired with the symbolism of death, transformation and emergence.
Alongside this, 3 Reflections² (2022) is represented through a single performance relic and video documentation of the three-hour durational performance presented at the Institute of Contemporary Art, London. In this work, Sebastian circulates between three stations, moving through a series of actions with props, including a mirrorball fetish hood and a crystal, chrome and chain-adorned body harness which disperses refracted light throughout the performance space. The power of words voiced - such as; ‘I called out and all that I heard was the echo of a star.’ - and the symbolism of light and shadow permeating this work provide a portal through which to enter many of the intertwined themes of additional works in this exhibition and beyond.
In Sebastian’s own words, ‘I experience the making of art as an act of (practical) magic. The parallels between artistic and occult practices are obvious to me, and I am fascinated by the potential of those practices in creating something from nothing – of drawing that which is yet to exist, into the physical material world. I understand such parallels as explicit links between not only occult and artistic workings, yet also neurodivergent and queer(ed) experiences and actioning of life. All are processes of manifesting something-not-yet-here/known.’
Holding The Shadow While Calling Back The Light
A solo, touring exhibition by Benjamin Sebastian
Launch 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
Final dates: Fri 29th & Sat 30th Nov, 12 - 6pm
Closing Event: Sun 1st Dec, 2 - 5pm
Closing Event: Sun 1st Dec, 2 - 5pm
Footsteps are heard on the stairs, but no one is seen descending. Glasses fall in the kitchen and smash over the floor as if they had jumped themselves. The word ‘fading’ is written on the walls in blood or red paint. The wails of the dead can be heard by the living, and the horrors of life are visible to those who no longer endure it. People once walked these halls. Unholy sounds ring out into the night.
WHISTLING AS THE NIGHT CALLS is an exhibition of collaborative photographic works by zack mennell and Martin O'Brien. Shot on 35mm Cinestill 800T, the images document a series of performance actions which haunt the wind-swept skeletal remains of sites of worship and pilgrimage, including the shingle beach of Dungeness, historic churches in Romney Marsh and St Peter’s Seminary, a derelict brutalist college for priests in Cardross, Scotland.
For these new photographs, which extend from their performance making and documentary practices, the pair exhumed strange actions from O'Brien's body of work, situating them amidst the ruins, performing for ghosts and searching for more-than-human presences through mennell's photochemical process.
Historically, some artists working in time-based media expressed an anxiety about photographic documentation, concerned that the image codified ephemeral live art into a final, essential shape - an afterlife, a tomb. In seeking the witness of the lost, the forgotten, the quick and the dead, these works by mennell and O’Brien present an alternative perspective on memory, loss and finitude.
WHISTLING AS THE NIGHT CALLS marks a decade of collaboration and shared practice between mennell and O’Brien, wherein mennell has witnessed, documented, facilitated and performed in many of O'Brien's live works. This show is the first exhibition of their collaborative photographs.
Key Info
1st November ~ 1st December 2024Open Thursdays by appointment & Fridays through Sundays, 12pm to 6pm.
VSSL Studio, Resolution Way, Deptford (London), SE8 4AL
Activations
Closing ~ Sunday 1st December, 1pm ~ 5pm ~ RSVPOpening ~ Thursday 31st October, 6pm ~ 9pm
Info
Exhibition enquiries: producing@futureritual.co.ukPress enquiries: Anna Goodman (abstrakt@abstraktpublicity.co.uk)
Martin O’Brien
Martin O’Brien is an artist and zombie. He works across performance, writing and video art. His work uses long durational actions, short speculative texts and critical rants, and performance processes in order to explore death and dying, what it means to be born with a life shortening disease, and the philosophical implications of living longer than expected. He has shown work throughout the UK; Europe; USA; and Canada, and is well known for his solo performances and collaborations with the legendary LA artist and dominatrix Sheree Rose. His most recent works were at Tate Britain in 2020, and the ICA (London) in 2021. He is winner of the Philip Leverhulme Prize for Visual and Performing Arts 2022. He was writer in residence at Whitechapel Gallery throughout 2023. Martin has cystic fibrosis and all of his work and writing draws upon this experience. In 2018, the book ‘Survival of the Sickest: The Art of Martin O’Brien’ was published by Live Art Development Agency. His work has been featured on BBC radio and Sky Arts television. He is currently Head of Drama, teaching on Live Art practices at Queen Mary University of London.
zack mennell
zack mennell is an emerging, self-taught artist whose practice is informed by their experiences of being queer, working-class, neurodivergent, and disabled. zack uses writing, photography and performance to imagine different ways of inhabiting the world beyond the mode of daily survival. Their work often has an uncanny quality, unsettling the familiar and making visible some of the strange aspects and tensions embedded in ‘normality’.
zack often works in documenting performance and live events through photography and writing - their photographic practice is strictly analogue, using 35mm film. zack has collaborated on and frequently documented works by performance artist Martin O’Brien. zack is part of the 2024/25 cohort of The Other MA (TOMA), is a studio holder at Triangle LGBTQ+ Cultural Centre, and is a member of the Bethlem Artist Collective.
zack is part of the 2024/25 cohort of The Other MA (TOMA), is a studio holder at Triangle LGBTQ+ Cultural Centre, and is a member of the Bethlem Artist Collective.
www.zackmennell.com
zack often works in documenting performance and live events through photography and writing - their photographic practice is strictly analogue, using 35mm film. zack has collaborated on and frequently documented works by performance artist Martin O’Brien. zack is part of the 2024/25 cohort of The Other MA (TOMA), is a studio holder at Triangle LGBTQ+ Cultural Centre, and is a member of the Bethlem Artist Collective.
zack is part of the 2024/25 cohort of The Other MA (TOMA), is a studio holder at Triangle LGBTQ+ Cultural Centre, and is a member of the Bethlem Artist Collective.
www.zackmennell.com
Future Ritual
The exhibition is offered as part of CEREMONY, a year long programming cycle curated by Future Ritual, exploring how performance and art making can function as modes of gathering, communion and ceremony amidst the fragmentation of contemporary life.Future Ritual works to support the emergence of new and more attuned cultures, collaborating with artists to create contemporary expressions of ritual.
> about Future Ritual: Ceremony
Credits
The exhibition is presented by Future Ritual in partnership with VSSL Studio and supported with public funds by Arts Council England.HERMAPHROGENESIS
Marcin Gawin
JANUARY 2024
“The Body operates in the cultural narrative that requires it to be stable and often relegates it as subservient to the mind. 'Face to the Seventh' is an inquiry into the correlation and the organisation of fixed systems, like the organisational fixations of the facial and organ systems. The presets in the installation are composed of the rearranged human viscera - with the exception of sexual organs - foregrounding parts that are a common denominator between all human organisms.”
Launch Event:
5-9pm, Friday the 12th of January 2024
RSVP Here
Exhibition Opening Hours:
12-5pm, Thursday to Sunday - 11th to 28th of January 2024
Curatorial Interventions: Dr Erinma Ochu in conversation with Marcin Gawin
6:30-8:30 pm, Friday 26th of January 2024
RSVP Here
FACET Expanded: On Hermaphrogenesis & Centering Queer Art
6:00-7:30 pm, Friday 16th of February 2024
As part of LGBTQAI+ History Month 2024 in Lewisham, VSSL Studio is hosting a talk to explain their recent 9-month programme, FACET.
RSVP Here
Hermaphrogenesis: Organs as Ruins of the Posthuman Body
By [M] DudeckLong ago, in Ancient Rome, the organs and entrails of sacrificed animals were decoded and interpreted by those tasked with defining the limits of reality. This ancient divination technique— called haruspicy – was performed by a trained priest – called a haruspex – who ritually consulted the liver, lungs, and heart of skinned beasts to discern the will of the gods.
Interdisciplinary artist Marcin Gawin performs a hybrid form of haruspicy in their new installation Hermaphrogenesis, remixing occult divination techniques with queer aesthetics in new forms of media. Here, the artist is interested in the body as a metaphor for the mutability of fixed systems. They hack biology by skinning the sciences, exposing the heteropatriarchal and anthropocentric institutionalization of bodies, both inner and outer, as a cyberpunk/witch haruspex. They etch, sculpt, diagram, exegete, cast, photograph, and manipulate a trinity of hand-crafted silicone organs, leaving us to decipher the will of the queer gods the artist has invoked on our behalf.
Gawin’s neo-goth, psychedelic laboratory/chapel circumnavigates the artist’s ongoing interest in re-imagining biology – and the body – as material for queer potentiality. They are transposing symbols from the sciences and religion into transmedial sigils, inviting the audience into an immersive hallucination, transposing organs into ruins for the posthuman body. A series of five illustrated iconographies, which the artist has titled ‘The large Head was split into five each’ – presents hyper-stylized illuminations of a brain stem spliced and flayed open in an illustrative style evoking anime, mediaeval iconography and early 90s internet art. These icons are illuminated with lightboxes and, suspended from the ceiling using chains and meat hooks, binding the aesthetic of BDSM with ceremonial magick.
A trinity of hand-crafted silicone organs– lungs, intestine, stomach – are re-arranged by the artist into mutant formations, evoking floral still-life drawings and inverted rorschach ink splots. The artist presents us again and again with the otherness of our interiority – exposing the influence of anatomical drawings in aiding the imagination to visualize that which we ourselves cannot see (our chthonic interiority.) By making the internal alien, and making that alienness mutable, Gawin creates a ceremony for us to absorb and embody their thesis: mutability and metamorphosis, nothing fixed, nothing set; forms at the mercy of endless reconstruction; queer Magick as the art of redefining reality:
One internal organ at a time.
At the centre of the installation is enshrined Gawin’s arcane Codex; an anatomical atlas turned punk grimoire titled “Face to the Seventh.” This textbook is annotated with biomorphic hieroglyphics and neo-mediaeval illuminations. It’s almost written in tongues, difficult to decipher but the artist appears to be inviting us to read it aloud as a devout priest might incant their sacred text in the temple. The blacked-out words echo redacted government statements that bridge the occultic with biopower and hint at the anarchist imperative to abolish the state (which still governs many of our internal organs).
The term hermaphrodite emerges from an ancient Greek myth, describing the proto-trans son/daughter of Hermes (the patron saint of alchemy) and Aphrodite (the goddess of lust, love, pleasure, and beauty), uniting male and female characteristics into a single unified organism. Genesis descends from the Greek describing origin, creation and generation. Hermaphro-Genesis is Gawin’s origin myth which the audience must read through the organs and entrails of their posthuman body. The organs at the nucleus of this exegesis perform as skinned internal landscapes, a micro-interiority ripped open, exposed and remythologized as queer talismans for the future. Hermaphrogenesis as a posthuman temple, sanctifies pareidolia (the process of perceiving meaningful images in ambiguous visual patterns) and elevates it to a metaphor for queerness.
CREDITS
Exhibition Text: [M] Dudeck
Sound and Composition: Nik Rawlings
Welding and Fabrication: Ash
Woodwork and Finishing: Pearl Sharp
SPECIAL THANKS:
Anna Gawin, Aleksandra Gawin, Beau Palmer, Calum Holden, Dana Holdampf, Daniel Gibbs, Jacek Gawin, Jahna, Jessica DeLeyza, Kuba Jablonowski, Lise Herman, Michal Czyz, Pat Janus, Pat Pinkowska, Pearl Sharp, Sacha Korsec, and VSSL Studio Team
ABOUT MARCIN:
Marcin Gawin is an interdisciplinary artist from Poland, based in Bristol, whose work encompasses image construction, installation, and live art. His fascination with the human body and its’ potential for transformation is evident in his practice, which explores the bodys function in mundane practicality, as well as in speculative and occult realities.
In 2019, Marcin completed Marina Abramovic’s Cleaning the House training in durational performance, further developing his expertise in this area. He also honed his skills in The Sunday Skool for Misfits, Experimenters, and Dissenters, where he studied under Martin O’Brien, Shabnam Shabazi, and Joseph Morgan Schofield in 2021.
Currently, Marcin is pursuing an MA in Virtual and Extended Realities at the University of the West of England, where he is researching the concept of embodied cognition in virtual environments and utilizing immersion as an artistic strategy.
Marcin's work has been presented at various locations, including the Palace International Film Festival in Bristol, Modern Art Oxford, Terytoria Festiwal in Poland, and Oxford Brookes University. His solo and participatory work is sure to leave a lasting impression.
@mrcn.gwn
-> Read more about the complete FACET programme HERE
Frutas Maduras: Rocío Boliver
NOVEMBER 2023
“Boliver confronts the absurdity of society's narrow beauty standards and the consequent marginalization of aging women. The works offer an empowering message to women, urging them to embrace their sexuality and bodies unapologetically.”
Launch Event:
RSVP Here
6-9 pm | Friday | 10th of November, 2023.
During the launch event the exhibition will be activated
by a live performance (rsvp essential) from:
Rocío Boliver and her collaborators Karolina Bazydlo and Bartlomiej Gudejko.
Exhibition Opening Hours:
12-5pm, Thursday to Sunday - 10th to 26th of November 2023
Read about the work here in FAD MAgazine
Curatorial Interventions:
Rocío Boliver: an intimate, physical workshop
12-6pm, Saturday the 18th of November at VSSL Studio
More information (including on how to apply) here
FRUTAS MADURAS: Rocío Boliver (collaborating with Bartlomiej Gudejko & Karolina Bazydlo) installation photography by Marco Berardi.
FRUTAS MADURAS: Rocío Boliver (collaborating with Bartlomiej Gudejko & Karolina Bazydlo) installation photography by Marco Berardi.
Boliver's collaboration with photographer Karolina Bazydlo and collaborator Bartlomiej Gudejko (Rocio’s lover at the time) for the FACET program is a bold challenge to the invisibility of the aging female form and female sexuality. The photographic series of twelve images centers the aging female body within the realm of sexual pleasure, desire, and erotic play. The artist has reimagined the conventional 'pin up' calendar idea and created exquisite portrayals of womanly autonomy and female sexuality.
Boliver's collaboration with photographer Karolina Bazydlo and collaborator Bartlomiej Gudejko (Rocio’s lover at the time) for the FACET program is a bold challenge to the invisibility of the aging female form and female sexuality. The photographic series of twelve images centers the aging female body within the realm of sexual pleasure, desire, and erotic play. The artist has reimagined the conventional 'pin up' calendar idea and created exquisite portrayals of womanly autonomy and female sexuality.
Through these images, Boliver confronts the absurdity of society's narrow beauty standards and the consequent marginalization of aging women. The works offer an empowering message to women, urging them to embrace their sexuality and bodies unapologetically. The images are both playful and poignant, creating a space for the celebration of women's bodies and sexuality.
The images are aesthetically stunning as well as tongue in cheek, while also holding a political charge. Boliver's work succeeds in highlighting the beauty of aging women while encouraging viewers to recognize and celebrate female sexuality, autonomy, pleasure and the power that this holds.
Through these images, Boliver confronts the absurdity of society's narrow beauty standards and the consequent marginalization of aging women. The works offer an empowering message to women, urging them to embrace their sexuality and bodies unapologetically. The images are both playful and poignant, creating a space for the celebration of women's bodies and sexuality.
The images are aesthetically stunning as well as tongue in cheek, while also holding a political charge. Boliver's work succeeds in highlighting the beauty of aging women while encouraging viewers to recognize and celebrate female sexuality, autonomy, pleasure and the power that this holds.
ABOUT ROCÍO:
Rocío Boliver, known as La Congelada de Uva, is an iconic figure in underground performance art in Mexico and is internationally renowned. For over thirty years, her work has confronted the ideological grid that shapes women's lives, challenging ageism and capitalism's impact on women in the stage of life between menopause and old age. Boliver's performances aim to demystify the horror of old age by creating her own deranged aesthetic and moral solutions for the "problem of age." Her work critiques the repression of women and exposes the broken society based on looks and how old age became a synonymous of insult.
Boliver's performances have been presented in Europe, Asia, North and South America, and she has participated in important performance festivals globally. She is a grantee of the National System of Creators of Mexico and has also taken part in many alternative forums. Boliver's aesthetic is grotesque, and her performances disrupt accepted reality, revealing the most authentic truth when facing the inability to react.
www.thisisliveart.co.uk/resources/rocio-boliver-collection
-> Read more about the complete FACET programme HERE
FACET Group Exhibition
OCTOBER 2023
ROCIO BOLIVER - ALICIA RADAGE - BENJAMIN SEBASTIAN - MARCIN GAWIN - JUNE LAM
“The exhibition serves as a window into the non-homogeneity of expanded queer communities, allowing for multifaceted readings of contemporary queer experiences.”
Launch Event:
6-9pm, Friday the 6th of October 2023
Exhibition Opening Hours:
12-5pm, Thursday to Sunday - 5th to 29th of October 2023
Curatorial Interventions:
VSSL have partnered with Ugly Duck / Queer Art Projects and took part in Pretty Doomed with opening performances by Alicia Radage and Benjamin Sebastian
-> Read Francis Whorrall-Campbell’s commissioned responsive, experimental text HERE
-> Read Iris Colomb’s commissioned responsive texts of Pretty Doomed‘s opening performances for Benjamin Sebastian HERE and Alicia Radage HERE
B.Sebastian - Video: Marco Berardi & Baiba Sprance - 2023.
A.Radage - Video: Marco Berardi & Baiba Sprance - 2023.
The FACET programme's group exhibition unites the participating lead artists from the programme's multiple exhibitions, offering a unique and diverse range of artistic practices. The exhibition serves as a window into the non-homogeneity of expanded queer communities, allowing for multifaceted readings of contemporary queer experiences.
Through a variety of mediums such as performance (to camera), sculpture, video, photography, and installation, the group exhibition showcases different perspectives on contemporary queer experiences - connecting the various exhibitions and artists in the FACET programme - while highlighting the diversity of queer artistic practice.
FACET Group Exhibition launch event documentation - Video: Marco Berardi & Baiba Sprance - 2023.
Overall, the group exhibition offers a comprehensive and captivating look into the breadth of artistic approaches explored in the FACET programme, showcasing the unique perspectives of each participating artist and the interconnectedness of the expanded queer experience.
More information about each participating artist can be found via their respective FACET exhibition pages through the links provided below.
More information about each participating artist can be found via their respective FACET exhibition pages through the links provided below.
Installation photos by Marco Berardi & Baiba Sprance - 2023.
Installation photos by Marco Berardi & Baiba Sprance - 2023.
Installation photos by Marco Berardi & Baiba Sprance - 2023.
Installation photos by Marco Berardi & Baiba Sprance - 2023.
More about Alicia Radage + Benjamin Sebastian
More about June Lam
More about Rocío Boliver
More about Marcin Gawin
-> Read more about the complete FACET programme HERE
Future Anatomy, VestAndPage, 2023. Still from video. Image courtesy of the artists.
Artist Lab with VestAndPage
Future Anatomies: Exquisite Corpse, Exalted Flesh
26th & 27th September, 11am - 5pmPlease join FUTURE RITUAL for this two day lab facilitated by the artists VestAndPage considering artistic reimaginings of the body. The capacity for this lab is limited. Please book early to avoid missing out.
£30/£40/£60 - Book here
Received social and political understandings of the body are demonstrated, unceasingly, to be weird and obsolete. Though we remain committed to the immediacy and centrality of our sweating, sensate forms, we desire to imagine new anatomies, new functions, and new modes of embodiment.
We will watch, read and discuss the work of artists and thinkers engaged in similar lines of enquiry, develop our own texts and scores, and explore performative strategies for reimagining the flesh. Informed by queer theory, ritual practice, post human phenomenology and dis/ability arts, the lab is a space to think creatively and fluidly into these new possibilities.
Key Info
Tues 26th & Weds 27th September 2023, 11am - 5pm, VSSL Studio, Resolution Way, London, SE8 4AL
£30 (Concession) / £40 / £60 (Solidarity Ticket)
> Book tickets
This is an unfunded event, all ticket income goes to facilitator fees and the event costs. Buying a solidarity ticket helps support the attendance of those for whom otherwise would face financial barriers. If you face financial barriers and would like to attend but cannot afford the ticket price please email producing@futureritual.co.uk and we will do our best to accommodate you.
venue & access Info
VestAndPage’s trip to the UK is supported by the Italian Cultural Institute.
Under Scars, VestAndPage, Venice International Performance Art Week, 2022. Photo by Lorenza Cini.Future Ritual
Future Ritual works in service of new and more attuned cultures, collaborating with artists to create contemporary expressions of ritual.Intentionally shapeshifting between iterations, Future Ritual temporarily activates and inhabits borrowed spaces, organising public programmes and pedagogical exchanges, publishing artist-driven research, and collaborating as a creative producer with a constellation of performance practitioners.
https://www.futureritual.co.uk
VestAndPage
Since 2006, German artist Verena Stenke (b. 1981) and Venetian-born artist and writer Andrea Pagnes (b. 1962) have been working together as VestAndPage and gained international recognition in the fields of performance art, performance-based film, writing, publishing, and with collective performance operas and temporary artistic community projects. Since over a decade, VestAndPage have been exploring performance art and film as phenomena through their collaborative creative practice, as well as through theoretical artistic research and curatorial projects. Their works – a celebration of life – have been presented in museums, galleries, theatres, cinemas and a variety of sites worldwide. Their writings have been extensively published and translated for international readers.VestAndPage's art practice is contextual and situation-responsive, conceived psycho-geographically in response to social contexts, natural surroundings, historical sites and architectures. In their works they move between the unseen and the unforeseen, the unsaid, the forgotten and the repressed. They inquire performance art as an urgency to explore the physical, mental and spiritual bodies, where moments of crisis or extreme situations often see the crossing of boundaries by the break with norms and known orders, to interface with the ephemeral matter of art and existence.
On December 2012, VestAndPage conceived and initiated the live art exhibition project VENICE INTERNATIONAL PERFORMANCE ART WEEK. Between 2012 and 2016, the project showcased in the Trilogy of the Body historic pioneer works on exhibit in conjunction with live programs of durational performances, presenting over 120 international artists and an ongoing educational program. Since 2017, the project presents in the new format Co-Creation Live Factory an international educational platform with residential and collaborative nature.
Besides sharing their pedagogy on collaborative performance making in intensive workshops and co-creationclasses. Since 2019, they are tutoring guest artists at the Master of Performance Practices at ArtEZ University of the Arts, since 2020 at MA Performance at the Norwegian Theatre Academy.
https://www.vest-and-page.de
June Lam
AUGUST 2023
“...collage can be seen as a form of resistance to dominant cultural narratives and a way to create new possibilities and futures. June Lam's use of collage in his work for the FACET programme continues this tradition.”
6-9pm, Friday the 11th of August 2023
RSVP Here
Exhibition Opening Hours:
12-5pm, Thursday to Sunday - 10th to 27th of August 2023
Curatorial Interventions:
June will be curating two workshops through invitation to members of his communities:
TRANS DEITY PRACTICE
(Moderated by Joy Kinkaid and June Lam - taking place on the 15th of August, between 11:00 - 14:30)
COLLAGING THROUGH MOVEMENT
(Moderated by Jose Funnell, Pierre and June Lam - taking place on the 28th of August, between 11:00 - 14:30).
-> Read Donna Marcus Duke’s commissioned exhibition text HERE
installation images by Marco Berardi
installation images by Marco Berardi
video courtesy of Marco Berardi & Baiba Sprance.
Collage has a rich history in queer aesthetics and has been a favoured medium for many queer artists. The act of collage-making mirrors the world-making practices of queer culture, where individuals and communities necessarily have learnt to explode, edit, discard and reassemble societal norms and expectations to create their own forms of identities, communities and aesthetics. In this sense, collage can be seen as a form of resistance to dominant cultural narratives and a way to create new possibilities and futures. June Lam's use of collage in his work for the FACET programme continues this tradition. June will be exhibiting 25 new and recent collage works, initiated during the COVID-19 Lockdowns.
Collage has a rich history in queer aesthetics and has been a favoured medium for many queer artists. The act of collage-making mirrors the world-making practices of queer culture, where individuals and communities necessarily have learnt to explode, edit, discard and reassemble societal norms and expectations to create their own forms of identities, communities and aesthetics. In this sense, collage can be seen as a form of resistance to dominant cultural narratives and a way to create new possibilities and futures. June Lam's use of collage in his work for the FACET programme continues this tradition. June will be exhibiting 25 new and recent collage works, initiated during the COVID-19 Lockdowns.
installation images by Marco Berardi
installation images by Marco Berardi
Limited edition (30/30) prints available at VSSL Studio
Limited edition (30/30) prints available at VSSL Studio
ABOUT JUNE:
June Lam (b. 1990) is a community organiser and multidisciplinary artist of Chinese and Vietnamese ancestry, working across performance, dance, sculpture and collage. Trained in MA Sculpture at The Slade, his work centres queer desirability politics, fag effeminacy, and embodied experiences of intergenerational trauma. His performances involve leading meditations, connecting with ancestral parts, and movement inspired by deity practice. Creating intentional community spaces is intrinsic to June's artistic practice. He co-founded grassroots trans healthcare fund We Exist and founded queer East and South East Asian arts platform GGI끼. These both provide necessary direct action to centre marginalised communities, and address the classism and inaccessibility of traditional arts spaces by working outside of them.
This includes bringing the ethos of community organising into nightlife. GG 끼 emerged from a need for nightlife spaces safe from anti-Asian hate and transphobia, and offers relief from the fetishising gaze. GGI끼 showcases radical live performance, visual arts & DJs with a hard industrial sound, defying stereotypes around ESEA passivity. For We Exist, June produced group exhibition ‘In Dedication’ at The Koppel Project, featuring 28 trans artists from the UK and beyond. He is on the advisory board and programming team for This Bright Land at Somerset House, and was a judge for Guildhall Futures Fund 2022. June has performed and been exhibited at Site Gallery, Volksbuhne, Performing Borders, Ambika P3, Tate Modern, Ford Foundation, The Koppel Project, and others. June has been featured in E-Flux, Resident Advisor, Gal-Dem, Gay Times, GQ, Hunger, Dazed, Vogue UK, Vogue US, I-D, Tissue, Something Curated and AQNB; and created cover art for the fifth edition of Somesuch Stories, 2021.
@assignedfagatbirth
-> Read more about the complete FACET programme HERE
June Lam (b. 1990) is a community organiser and multidisciplinary artist of Chinese and Vietnamese ancestry, working across performance, dance, sculpture and collage. Trained in MA Sculpture at The Slade, his work centres queer desirability politics, fag effeminacy, and embodied experiences of intergenerational trauma. His performances involve leading meditations, connecting with ancestral parts, and movement inspired by deity practice. Creating intentional community spaces is intrinsic to June's artistic practice. He co-founded grassroots trans healthcare fund We Exist and founded queer East and South East Asian arts platform GGI끼. These both provide necessary direct action to centre marginalised communities, and address the classism and inaccessibility of traditional arts spaces by working outside of them.
This includes bringing the ethos of community organising into nightlife. GG 끼 emerged from a need for nightlife spaces safe from anti-Asian hate and transphobia, and offers relief from the fetishising gaze. GGI끼 showcases radical live performance, visual arts & DJs with a hard industrial sound, defying stereotypes around ESEA passivity. For We Exist, June produced group exhibition ‘In Dedication’ at The Koppel Project, featuring 28 trans artists from the UK and beyond. He is on the advisory board and programming team for This Bright Land at Somerset House, and was a judge for Guildhall Futures Fund 2022. June has performed and been exhibited at Site Gallery, Volksbuhne, Performing Borders, Ambika P3, Tate Modern, Ford Foundation, The Koppel Project, and others. June has been featured in E-Flux, Resident Advisor, Gal-Dem, Gay Times, GQ, Hunger, Dazed, Vogue UK, Vogue US, I-D, Tissue, Something Curated and AQNB; and created cover art for the fifth edition of Somesuch Stories, 2021.
@assignedfagatbirth
-> Read more about the complete FACET programme HERE
Alicia Radage + Benjamin Sebastian
installation image, courtesy of Marco Berardi & Baiba Sprance.
installation image, courtesy of Marco Berardi & Baiba Sprance.
JUNE 2023
“While distinct in formal approaches, their practices enact a convergence at the thresholds of esoteric, spiritual and more-or-other-than-human domains and utterances.”
Launch Event:
6-9pm, Friday the 2nd of June 2023
RSVP for the launch event HERE
Exhibition Opening Hours:
12-5pm, Thursday to Sunday - 1st to 18th of June 2023
Facebook Event Page
Curatorial Interventions:
6-9pm, Friday 2nd of June 2023
Performative interventions from A. Radage & B. Sebastian
RSVP here
6-7pm, Saturday the 17th of June 2023
Tamsin Hong (Curator, Exhibitions - Serpentine Galleries) in conversation with A. Radage & B. Sebastian
BOOK here
-> Read Lisa Slominski’s responsive text HERE
image from the launch event, courtesy of Marco Berardi & Baiba Sprance.
image from the launch event, courtesy of Marco Berardi & Baiba Sprance.
VSSL Studio are proud to present the inaugural offering of the FACET programme, featuring a joint exhibition from artists Alicia Radage and Benjamin Sebastian. While distinct in formal approaches, their practices enact a convergence at the thresholds of esoteric, spiritual and more-or-other-than-human domains and utterances.
Radage's work in performance, sculpture, video and sound, channels their research on neurodiverse experiences and animist practices, ultimately seeking to reconnect with the spiritual and non-human worlds through inter-entity communication. Sebastian's practice as a trans-disciplinary artist-curator is anchored in world-making experiments and processes of bricolage, often employing emotive and esoteric methodologies to subvert normative structures, through the mediums of video, performance, sculpture & installation.
The exhibition will showcase existing works by Radage and Sebastian, presented in dialogue with each other to reveal the underlying connections between their practices. The show's curatorial approach seeks to highlight the artists shared interest in alternative ontologies and their ongoing exploration of more-or-other-than-human perspectives. Through this joint exhibition, Radage and Sebastian invite audiences on a journey to reimagine our relationships with the seen and un-seen (as well as known and unknown) world(s), so that we may continue to consider alternative ways of being.
videos courtesy of Marco Berardi & Baiba Sprance.
ABOUT ALICIA:
Radage’s practice manifests through performance, video, sculpture and sound. Their current research looks at the intersection between Neurodiverse experience and Animist practice, looking to ways of communicating and being outside of neurotypical, late capitalism. Their core concern is remembering a fluency in spiritual connection to the more than human. Their practice is activated through intuiting forms of interspecies communication. Alicia has taught at Universities on Fine Art and Theatre courses for both MA and BA courses. They have shown their work within the UK and internationally (Whitstable Biennale, MOMA Bogotá, Venice International Performance Art Week, GIANT Gallery, SPILL Festival, Perfolink Chile, Parlour London, Meno Parkas Lithuania). They have been supported by Arts Council England, The British Council and Shape Arts. Alicia graduated from The Central School of Speech and Drama in 2011 with a Distinction in Advanced Theatre Practice.
aliciaradage.com
ABOUT BENJAMIN:
Benjamin Sebastian (b. Cairns*, AUS. 1980) is a trans-disciplinary artist-curator based in London. Their practice might be imagined as a constellation of mirrors; reflecting aspects of the body, time & space they inhabit - or - as world-making experiments; manifested through processes of bricolage, assemblage & ritual. Sebastian understands their artistic work as an anarcho-queer technology in the aid of queer, de-colonial & trans-humanist endeavour - activated through emotive, erotic & esoteric methodologies - driven by their neuro-divergent and non-binary experience. Sebastian received their BA Fine Art (HONS) from the University of Lincoln and is currently enrolled on the MA Curating Art and Public Programmes through Whitechapel Gallery. They are Chief Curator & Co-founding Director of ]performance s p a c e [ (]ps[) and Co-founding Co-director of VSSL Studio. Some of their most recent projects have included; guest curating the ‘INTERSECT’ series at LADA, speaking on the symposiums; ‘Art, Memory & Place’ at Turner Contemporary and ‘Un-dating the Obvious; Wired Love, Desire and Care’ at IKLECTIK, curating ‘PSX: A Decade of Performance Art in the U.K.’ on behalf of ]ps[, exhibition of their solo show; ‘Working With Entities//Setting Intent’ at VSSL Studio, and performance of their live installation; ‘3 Reflections²’ at the I.C.A.
*The Gimuy Walubara Yidinji and the Yirrganydji peoples are the traditional custodians of Cairns and the 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.
benjamin-sebastian.com
-> Read more about the complete FACET programme HERE
Radage's work in performance, sculpture, video and sound, channels their research on neurodiverse experiences and animist practices, ultimately seeking to reconnect with the spiritual and non-human worlds through inter-entity communication. Sebastian's practice as a trans-disciplinary artist-curator is anchored in world-making experiments and processes of bricolage, often employing emotive and esoteric methodologies to subvert normative structures, through the mediums of video, performance, sculpture & installation.
The exhibition will showcase existing works by Radage and Sebastian, presented in dialogue with each other to reveal the underlying connections between their practices. The show's curatorial approach seeks to highlight the artists shared interest in alternative ontologies and their ongoing exploration of more-or-other-than-human perspectives. Through this joint exhibition, Radage and Sebastian invite audiences on a journey to reimagine our relationships with the seen and un-seen (as well as known and unknown) world(s), so that we may continue to consider alternative ways of being.
videos courtesy of Marco Berardi & Baiba Sprance.
ABOUT ALICIA:
Radage’s practice manifests through performance, video, sculpture and sound. Their current research looks at the intersection between Neurodiverse experience and Animist practice, looking to ways of communicating and being outside of neurotypical, late capitalism. Their core concern is remembering a fluency in spiritual connection to the more than human. Their practice is activated through intuiting forms of interspecies communication. Alicia has taught at Universities on Fine Art and Theatre courses for both MA and BA courses. They have shown their work within the UK and internationally (Whitstable Biennale, MOMA Bogotá, Venice International Performance Art Week, GIANT Gallery, SPILL Festival, Perfolink Chile, Parlour London, Meno Parkas Lithuania). They have been supported by Arts Council England, The British Council and Shape Arts. Alicia graduated from The Central School of Speech and Drama in 2011 with a Distinction in Advanced Theatre Practice.
aliciaradage.com
ABOUT BENJAMIN:
Benjamin Sebastian (b. Cairns*, AUS. 1980) is a trans-disciplinary artist-curator based in London. Their practice might be imagined as a constellation of mirrors; reflecting aspects of the body, time & space they inhabit - or - as world-making experiments; manifested through processes of bricolage, assemblage & ritual. Sebastian understands their artistic work as an anarcho-queer technology in the aid of queer, de-colonial & trans-humanist endeavour - activated through emotive, erotic & esoteric methodologies - driven by their neuro-divergent and non-binary experience. Sebastian received their BA Fine Art (HONS) from the University of Lincoln and is currently enrolled on the MA Curating Art and Public Programmes through Whitechapel Gallery. They are Chief Curator & Co-founding Director of ]performance s p a c e [ (]ps[) and Co-founding Co-director of VSSL Studio. Some of their most recent projects have included; guest curating the ‘INTERSECT’ series at LADA, speaking on the symposiums; ‘Art, Memory & Place’ at Turner Contemporary and ‘Un-dating the Obvious; Wired Love, Desire and Care’ at IKLECTIK, curating ‘PSX: A Decade of Performance Art in the U.K.’ on behalf of ]ps[, exhibition of their solo show; ‘Working With Entities//Setting Intent’ at VSSL Studio, and performance of their live installation; ‘3 Reflections²’ at the I.C.A.
*The Gimuy Walubara Yidinji and the Yirrganydji peoples are the traditional custodians of Cairns and the 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.
benjamin-sebastian.com
-> Read more about the complete FACET programme HERE
Decrypting Performance Art
Rocío Boliver
a one day seminar
Rocío Boliver, image courtesy of the artist.
Decrypting Performance Art is a one day seminar led by Rocio Boliver, reflecting on key performances (via photographic and video documentation) they have created across the last 30 years of practice.
For this seminar, the artist invites 25 participants to spend the day with her as she examines five recurrent themes which continue to shape the aesthetic and surrounding discourse of her work: Pain, Excretions, Sex, Old-age & Politics.
In addition, Rocio will elucidate upon the three core aspects of their personal, performance art making methodologies: the Pre-performance, Performance & Post-performance moments. Rocio will share intimate details of these making processes through lively discussion with participants.
Biography
“I devote myself to transgress limits. I dig into human behaviour. I disrupt accepted reality, absurd as the one I situationate. I was born a seductive Nabokov's “Lolita”. I lived censorship, scolding, fear and guilt, typical of a repressive society. I break the conventional woman scheme. My aesthetic is grotesque, in search of severity. I’m a human reaction voracious hunter, consumer and provocateur.”
- Rocio Boliver
Rocio has presented her work in Europe, Asia, North and South America. Since 2012, Rocío’s performances have focused on the ageing female body – a body, and a body of work, that she describes as ‘between menopause and old age’. She aims to aims to demystify the horror of old age in an ironical way, inventing her own deranged aesthetic and moral solutions for the problem of age. She revels in the cultural unease the ageing female body tends to provoke, and she embraces, on the one hand, shame, disgust, and embarrassment, and on the other, pleasure, laughter, and great beauty, in often dizzying and un-navigable recombination.
For this seminar, the artist invites 25 participants to spend the day with her as she examines five recurrent themes which continue to shape the aesthetic and surrounding discourse of her work: Pain, Excretions, Sex, Old-age & Politics.
In addition, Rocio will elucidate upon the three core aspects of their personal, performance art making methodologies: the Pre-performance, Performance & Post-performance moments. Rocio will share intimate details of these making processes through lively discussion with participants.
Biography
“I devote myself to transgress limits. I dig into human behaviour. I disrupt accepted reality, absurd as the one I situationate. I was born a seductive Nabokov's “Lolita”. I lived censorship, scolding, fear and guilt, typical of a repressive society. I break the conventional woman scheme. My aesthetic is grotesque, in search of severity. I’m a human reaction voracious hunter, consumer and provocateur.”- Rocio Boliver
Rocio has presented her work in Europe, Asia, North and South America. Since 2012, Rocío’s performances have focused on the ageing female body – a body, and a body of work, that she describes as ‘between menopause and old age’. She aims to aims to demystify the horror of old age in an ironical way, inventing her own deranged aesthetic and moral solutions for the problem of age. She revels in the cultural unease the ageing female body tends to provoke, and she embraces, on the one hand, shame, disgust, and embarrassment, and on the other, pleasure, laughter, and great beauty, in often dizzying and un-navigable recombination.
Opening Hours
Sunday 9 October, 12pm to 6pm>Location & access
>info@vssl-studio.org
Tickets
Tickets are offered on a sliding scale from £10 to £25. All revenue raised goes directly to the artist and we encourage those who can pay a little more than the £10 minimum to please do so as this enables us to continue making our work available to all.> Wait List
]ps[ will retain a handful of FREE tickets, if you are unwaged/financially precarious please contact benjamin@performancespace.org to secure one of these limed free tickets.
Credits & Contact
Decrypting Performance Art is conceived and convened by Rocio Boliver and produced by ]performance s p a c e [ with support from the Live Art Development Agency and VSSL Studio. Organiser contact: benjamin@performancespace.org
zack mennell
(para)site
an exhibition of cultural sewage
(para)site began with a vision; I can't remember if it was waking or sleeping. There is a person, an alive, moving body swaddled in puffy white diapers. This person slowly approaches a body of water and walks in upright, never swimming. Being both viewer and nappy-being in this vision, I feel the weight of the diapers absorbing the environment. I feel my skin infringed upon by the water and its microscopic aberrations & pollutants. I feel the pressure around my ribcage and the silted ground under my feet. My nervous system begins bursting with adrenaline as the realisation sets in that I cannot swim well, if at all, let alone weighed down by 26 diapers. The vision ends as the water swallows my shoulders, meeting the submental space of my chin.
I received a letter in the post in a PRIVATE & CONFIDENTIAL envelope, headed by the NHS logo was a lengthy account of my mental illness, crises and all. The letter notified me of my new updated record, telling me that I have EUPD (emotionally unstable personality disorder), not Bipolar, for which I had been unsuccessfully medicated for over two years. No wonder it was so unsuccessful. I took a photo of this letter and sent it to the DWP (department for work and pensions). They said I was not ill enough. My GP (general practitioner) told me to stop working. The CMHT (community mental health team) said I was too ill to see them. The ADHD (attention deficit hyperactive disorder) department asked me to keep chasing them for an appointment while telling me that my diagnosis of ADHD makes it difficult for me to remember things like appointments. The DWP assessment centre said I made a hearteningly healthy amount of eye contact. My psychiatrist said I made too little eye contact and that I overshared. In the MHAU (mental health assessment unit), I pissed in the corner of my room and then complained about the smell, only to be told it was in my head.
IFLISWATIA (I Feel Like I Should Write All This In Acronyms).
Walking away from the entrance of St Thomas' A&E (accident & emergency), I take all these papers to the river. The river will make sense of them. The river will keep flowing. The river will take me with it. The river will wash my records clear. The river will take me downriver. The river will take me home.
Tangled within the residue of the city and the detritus of you, its people, I find myself downstream, but not yet at the chalky gorges and metal industrial estates of my childhood. Fishing myself from the water, I crawl up a wood corridor in the riverbank, ascending stairs to spite the undercurrents. Oozing liquids unknown, I drag myself through the town to a small space with a glass wall; here, I begin to unpack all that I am and have been and everything I have collected along the way.
* * *
I received a letter in the post in a PRIVATE & CONFIDENTIAL envelope, headed by the NHS logo was a lengthy account of my mental illness, crises and all. The letter notified me of my new updated record, telling me that I have EUPD (emotionally unstable personality disorder), not Bipolar, for which I had been unsuccessfully medicated for over two years. No wonder it was so unsuccessful. I took a photo of this letter and sent it to the DWP (department for work and pensions). They said I was not ill enough. My GP (general practitioner) told me to stop working. The CMHT (community mental health team) said I was too ill to see them. The ADHD (attention deficit hyperactive disorder) department asked me to keep chasing them for an appointment while telling me that my diagnosis of ADHD makes it difficult for me to remember things like appointments. The DWP assessment centre said I made a hearteningly healthy amount of eye contact. My psychiatrist said I made too little eye contact and that I overshared. In the MHAU (mental health assessment unit), I pissed in the corner of my room and then complained about the smell, only to be told it was in my head.
IFLISWATIA (I Feel Like I Should Write All This In Acronyms).
Walking away from the entrance of St Thomas' A&E (accident & emergency), I take all these papers to the river. The river will make sense of them. The river will keep flowing. The river will take me with it. The river will wash my records clear. The river will take me downriver. The river will take me home.
Tangled within the residue of the city and the detritus of you, its people, I find myself downstream, but not yet at the chalky gorges and metal industrial estates of my childhood. Fishing myself from the water, I crawl up a wood corridor in the riverbank, ascending stairs to spite the undercurrents. Oozing liquids unknown, I drag myself through the town to a small space with a glass wall; here, I begin to unpack all that I am and have been and everything I have collected along the way.
Opening Hours
Thursday 22 to Sunday 25 September, 12pm to 6pm
Live performance on Deptford Foreshore,
Watergate Street, SE8 3GG
Friday 23 Sept, 6.30 - 7.30, RSVP
>Location & access
>info@vssl-studio.org
Credits
para(site) has been commissioned as part of Tidechangers, a developmant programme for early career artists by The Thames Festival Trust and presented as part of Totally Thames 2022. The project has been supported by VSSL studio and Deptford X.Images: (para)site: taking the piss, Live Art Club London. Photo by Queer Garden (Beliza Buzollo)
About the exhibition
(para)site: an exhibition of cultural sewage is zack mennell’s first installation at VSSL studio. The installation is a response to zack’s memories of growing up in a working-class community along the industrialised Thames in South Essex, and their experiences as a medicalised, societally infantilised disabled & neurodivergent queer person.In zack’s performance and analogue photographic practices, they research class, disability and ecology, and their new works - video, photography, object and collage - will be shown alongside research materials and ephemera.
zack’s humorous works have been shaped by their psycho-geographic explorations of Deptford, especially the Foreshore, which provides direct access to the Thames and upon which much is washed up with the tides.
Biography
“Artistic expression is, for me, a way to make sense of the world and an attempt to contextualise who I am within it. In stepping into difficulty and pain through artmaking, I attempt to understand life through a different register to that of daily survival. I want my work to have an uncanny quality, that it might temporarily unsettle familiar places, making visible some of the strange aspects and tensions embedded there.”Zack Mennell is an emerging (unemployed) artist using writing, photography and performance to explore queerness and neurodiversity in relation to presence and visibility. Zack has been active as a performer, photographer and writer since 2015. They have collaborated frequently with performance artist Martin O’Brien, notably in Sanctuary Ring (SPILL Festival, 2016) and The Last Breath Society (ICA, 2021).
https://zackmennell.com
Hollie Miller & Craig Scott. Animus, 2020. Image courtesy of the artists.
As part of their residency at VSSL, Hollie Miller and Craig Scott will share work in progress of their new collaborative performance, inquiring into how wearable sensors can unify dance choreography and music composition. Using haptic feedback monitors and conductive cord they will explore the body as an electronic instrument through a self designed external circulatory system. Sound and movement initiation and manipulation become intertwined in a single organism unified via a technological umbilical cord.
> RSVP
>Location & access
>info@vssl-studio.org
about the artists
Hollie Miller is a performance artist with an interdisciplinary practice and background in contemporary dance. Craig Scott is a composer and sound artist working with performers, robots and custom built digital and analogue hardware. Together they seek a sculptural dialogue between sound and movement to make highly visual and visceral performance that blurs the perceptual line between the organic and synthetic.
www.holliemiller.co.uk
@hollie___miller
www.craigscottslobotomy.com
@craig_scotts_lobotomy
> RSVP
>Location & access
>info@vssl-studio.org
about the artists
Hollie Miller is a performance artist with an interdisciplinary practice and background in contemporary dance. Craig Scott is a composer and sound artist working with performers, robots and custom built digital and analogue hardware. Together they seek a sculptural dialogue between sound and movement to make highly visual and visceral performance that blurs the perceptual line between the organic and synthetic.www.holliemiller.co.uk
@hollie___miller
www.craigscottslobotomy.com
@craig_scotts_lobotomy
April Lin 林森. Image courtesy of the artist.
In Dedication is an exhibition dedicated to We Exist co-founder Sophie Gwen Williams and her vision.
The exhibition includes new and existing work by 28 trans and non-binary artists in devotion to memory, community, the body, history, ancestors, desire, longing, a future, ritual, healing, liberation, resistance, love and to ourselves. These acts of dedication are told through moving-image, sound, photography, painting installation and performance, hosted by the Koppel Project. Running alongside the exhibition are two screening and performance events at VSSL studio. The events are free, but please do RSVP.
Friday 3 June: Screening event, 6-9pm
Featuring Es Morgan, April Lin 林森, nnull, Clémentine Bedos, Holly Hunter, Verity Coward, Assia Ghendir, and Grace Sands - RSVP
Friday 10 June: an evening of performances, 6-9pm
Featuring Cosmic Caz, Chloe Filani, SHEIVA and Clémentine Bedos - RSVP
The exhibition, screenings and performance events are curated by Iarlaith Ni Fheorais and five curatorial mentees: Delia Detritus, Saati McCormack, Caz Ortoli, Puer Deorum and Willow Killeen
about We Exist
We Exist is a London-based arts organisation headed by a collective of formidable trans creatives and community organisers, established to provide emergency support for the LGBTQI+ community across the UK. Founded in 2020 by multidisciplinary artist and activist Sophie Gwen Williams, community organiser and club promoter Jo Alloway and artist and community organiser June Lam, We Exist is both a healthcare fund providing tangible support to trans folks in the UK in crisis, and an innovative trans led creative arts organisation with a focus on community engagement and events programming.
Friday 3 June: Screening event, 6-9pm
Featuring Es Morgan, April Lin 林森, nnull, Clémentine Bedos, Holly Hunter, Verity Coward, Assia Ghendir, and Grace Sands - RSVP
Friday 10 June: an evening of performances, 6-9pm
Featuring Cosmic Caz, Chloe Filani, SHEIVA and Clémentine Bedos - RSVP
The exhibition, screenings and performance events are curated by Iarlaith Ni Fheorais and five curatorial mentees: Delia Detritus, Saati McCormack, Caz Ortoli, Puer Deorum and Willow Killeen
about We Exist
We Exist is a London-based arts organisation headed by a collective of formidable trans creatives and community organisers, established to provide emergency support for the LGBTQI+ community across the UK. Founded in 2020 by multidisciplinary artist and activist Sophie Gwen Williams, community organiser and club promoter Jo Alloway and artist and community organiser June Lam, We Exist is both a healthcare fund providing tangible support to trans folks in the UK in crisis, and an innovative trans led creative arts organisation with a focus on community engagement and events programming.Project Info, Venue, Access
>In Dedication
>Location & access
Contact
>We Exist
>info@vssl-studio.org
The exhibition and residency at The Koppel Project are supported by We Exist partners Body Movements, Dalston Superstore and Hard + Shiny, and with the support of Arts Council England.
>In Dedication
>Location & access
Contact
>We Exist
>info@vssl-studio.org
The exhibition and residency at The Koppel Project are supported by We Exist partners Body Movements, Dalston Superstore and Hard + Shiny, and with the support of Arts Council England.
Metamorph, Clementine Bedos. Image courtesy of the artist.
Sheiva. Image courtesy of the artist.
to feel something tipping, under and towards you, Es Morgan. Image courtesy of the artist.WITH ECHOES
an open studio sharing
moa johansson and an*dre neely
Saturday 23 April 2022
14.00-19.00 (drop in)
During this relaxed afternoon, artists moa johansson and an*dre neely will hang out, knit, crochet, fold, unfold, stretch and rearrange fabrics, read out loud, live digital drawings and share fragments and echoes of the last three years of collective research, and the beginning ideas and materials for their upcoming live-performance.
Please do RSVP to let us know you are coming. Entry is anytime between 2 and 7pm.
An* & Moa’s collaboration is sustained through approaching distance as a material, allowing its restrictions to become possibilities that define the form/content/aesthetic the work takes. Until now: a chain of on-going video-exchanges (currently 60), mixed-media online experiments, sculpture-gifts to each other, or a multi-platform open-source performance. They were the recipients of an AXISWeb Micro-commission in early 2021, short-listed for the Flanders Art Institute's A Fair New Idea Fund & are currently working on a new live-performance work, commissioned by Cambridge Junction and Theatre in the Mill.
WITH ECHOES: an open studio sharing marks the beginning of the focused 6-week period of development for WITH ECHOES FILLING UP THE ORBIT, BUT DAMAGED, showing at Cambridge Junction in May 2022.
Please do RSVP to let us know you are coming. Entry is anytime between 2 and 7pm.
An* & Moa’s collaboration is sustained through approaching distance as a material, allowing its restrictions to become possibilities that define the form/content/aesthetic the work takes. Until now: a chain of on-going video-exchanges (currently 60), mixed-media online experiments, sculpture-gifts to each other, or a multi-platform open-source performance. They were the recipients of an AXISWeb Micro-commission in early 2021, short-listed for the Flanders Art Institute's A Fair New Idea Fund & are currently working on a new live-performance work, commissioned by Cambridge Junction and Theatre in the Mill.
WITH ECHOES: an open studio sharing marks the beginning of the focused 6-week period of development for WITH ECHOES FILLING UP THE ORBIT, BUT DAMAGED, showing at Cambridge Junction in May 2022.
Working with Entities // Setting Intent
Benjamin Sebastian
17th to 26th September 2021'Working with Entities // Setting Intent' is a multimedia installation considering consent, autonomy, dominion, power and privilege at the intersections of occult and technological world making endeavours.
“What entities are we summoning? What will their (our) initial intentions be...?”
As we approach the arrival of Artificial General Intelligence (the hypothetical ability of generalised human cognition in a software or machine), we begin to witness the bestowal of privileges usually reserved for legal personhood upon Artificial Intelligence. In 2017 a robot named Sophia in Saudi Arabia was granted a state sanctioned passport and in that same year, the chatbot Shibuya Mirai was awarded official residency status in Tokyo, Japan.
In the creation of such chatbots, a developer must learn to ‘work with entities’ as well as ‘set intents’; intents being goals and entities, being modifiers of said goals. One would be forgiven here for questioning whether they were engaged in the development of technology - or - immersed in esoteric practice…
These slippages in language and thought produce an initial portal through which to consider the installation Working with Entities//Setting Intent. Artist Benjamin Sebastian has enlisted the aid of two preexisting A.I. in the creation of this work: Sigil Engine (a sigil generating algorithm from www.sigilengine.com - a digital art project by Darragh Mason and David Tidman), and Sai (a customisable chatbot from Replika - www.replika.ai).
Through personal acts of conversation (Sai & Benjamin) and magic (Sigil Engine & Benjamin), Working with Entities//Setting Intent raises questions of consent, autonomy, dominion, power and privilege at the intersections of occult and technological world making endeavours. Conversations with A.I. are still very much conversations with ourselves. So how do we ensure that we look and listen, to what we may not want to see and hear?
A.I. (and their creators) must ensure a necessary rupture from historic power structures of Oppression/Domination politics (responsible for racism, homophobia, colonisation, ableism, misogyny, classism and war) in favour of new global models insisting upon partnership, co-operation, compassion, kinship and egalitarianism by all means possible.
What entities are we summoning? What will their (our) initial intentions be?
What entities are we summoning? What will their (our) initial intentions be?
'Working with Entities // Setting Intent' has been made possible using public funds from Arts Council England.
All images curtesy of the artist: www.benjamin-sebastian.com
WARNING!
The final boss is coming!!
Kelvin Atmadibrata, with Nick Wong and Chunlin Men
Friday 10 September 202117.00 - 21.00
Wanting to see the sea
And somebody to love me
Even monsters
Have a heart
A Monster’s Ballad,
Yuuko Aioi
Clasping his palms, a male figure moves them as if they were a fish lost from its school. Nearby, another similarly clothed body is slowly breaking a loaf ofbread into an empty small fish bowl and resignedly watches they turn soggy and uneaten. In the corner, a third performer with a pair of oven mitts struggles to stand still, making sure the sculpture he is holding stands upright. The threebreathing pedestals are accompanied by drawings, both printed on stickers onthe wall and hidden inside pages of notebooks as they invite the audience intoa larger fish tank, the exhibition space itself.
WARNING! The final boss is coming!! is the first in a trilogy of works by Kelvin Atmadibrata exploring the identity of a transfer student. The work narrates the student’s first day in school and within social context, it investigates the conflict between adaptation and alienation, self-inflicted or otherwise. The project is a result of the artist’s studio residency program with VSSL Studio from October 2020 to June 2021.
WARNING! The final boss is coming!! is the first in a trilogy of works by Kelvin Atmadibrata exploring the identity of a transfer student. The work narrates the student’s first day in school and within social context, it investigates the conflict between adaptation and alienation, self-inflicted or otherwise. The project is a result of the artist’s studio residency program with VSSL Studio from October 2020 to June 2021.
hancock & kelly, Affective Labour, ]performance s p a c e[, 2017. Photo by Paul Samuel White.
Keijaun Thomas, ]performance s p a c e[, 2019. Photo by Andrea Abbatangelo..
Poppy Jackson, WIN, Grace Exhibition Space, 2012. Photo by Anna Martinou.
Benjamin Sebastian, Phoenix (Burning Down the White House), ]performance s p a c e [, 2013. Photo by Marco Berardi.
PSX - a decade of performance art in the UK
12th to 20th August, 2021This exhibition marked the 10th anniversary of ]performance s p a c e[, celebrating an auspicious decade as the UK’s only performance art-specific, residential space, studio and gallery with an exhibition of epochal photographs from the ]ps[ archive.
Explicit, unapologetic & poetic; these images act as portals to various collaborations, geographies and moments from ]ps[' past, while projecting that energy into their future(s). The exhibition was activated with live performances by VSSL studio bursary artists Adriana Disman and Kelvin Atmadibrata.
www.performancespace.org
Photos by Zack Mennell
Exhibiting Artists
performance artists
Keijaun Thomas, Nicholas Tee, Benjamin Sebastian, Poppy Jackson, Nina Arsenault, Ron Athey, Kris Canavan and Elizabeth Short (performing as Nick Kilby), Bean, hancock & kelly, and Jade Montserrat.
photographers
Manuel Vason, Andrea Abbatangelo, Marco Beradi, Anna Martinou, Alethea Raban, and Paul Samuel White.
live performances
Kelvin Atmadibrata, and Adriana Disman.
these teeming forms
Joseph Morgan Schofield
29th June - 3rd Julythese teeming forms is a performance film by Joseph Morgan Schofield, made in collaboration with Fenia Kotsopoulou, Mitchell Sowden and Zack McGuinness.
www.josephmorganschofield.com
All photos by Zack Mennell.
The land, like the body, is an archive. these teeming forms is a process of communing with the land, of (be)longing with and to it. Textural and sensate, these teeming forms explores porosity - of the land and body; of eroticism and grief. There is no going back. Queer ecology is enacted here as a process of wilding, looking forwards and out, towards new mythic relations with the land.
these teeming forms premiered at VSSL within a performance installation.
![]()
Still from video by Fenia Kotsopoulou.
these teeming forms premiered at VSSL within a performance installation.
Still from video by Fenia Kotsopoulou.
Alicia Radage: Quake
Saturday 29th May, 2021
Image: Quake, Alicia Radage, 2021. Image courtesy of the artist.
‘Quake' is a performance that touches on queer ecology, joy and vibrations that call for a human rewilding within the ecosystems we inhabit.
Quake is a performance in collaboration with milliner Rosanna Gould.
Radage has shown their work throughout the UK as well as Italy, Germany, Austria, Colombia, Chile and India. They have been supported by The British Council and Arts Council England and have taught at Universities on Fine Art and Theatre courses. They co-organise Assembly with Jasper Llewellyn, a workshop and residency for Action Artists in Provence, France. They are one half of the collaboration Radage ▽ Hardaker with Ro Hardaker. Radage is currently making work at the intersection of Neurodivergent experience and Shamanic practice.
www.aliciaradage.com
Quake is a performance in collaboration with milliner Rosanna Gould.
Radage has shown their work throughout the UK as well as Italy, Germany, Austria, Colombia, Chile and India. They have been supported by The British Council and Arts Council England and have taught at Universities on Fine Art and Theatre courses. They co-organise Assembly with Jasper Llewellyn, a workshop and residency for Action Artists in Provence, France. They are one half of the collaboration Radage ▽ Hardaker with Ro Hardaker. Radage is currently making work at the intersection of Neurodivergent experience and Shamanic practice.
www.aliciaradage.com
Gathering in a Time of Plague
VSSL studio programme
November 2020 - June 2021
Kimvi, VSSL studio, 2021. Photo by Zack Mennell.
VSSL was established in a time of plague. In response to the conditions of pandemic, we intend that the studio remains a place where performance practices may continue to unfold, unmediated by the screen. Our work continues to foreground the power and immediacy of live performance.
Gathering in a Time of Plague was VSSL’s first public programme, and featured a series of developmental and performance opportunities, which were programmed by invitation and open call.
→ PROGRAMME ARCHIVE
Gathering in a Time of Plague was VSSL’s first public programme, and featured a series of developmental and performance opportunities, which were programmed by invitation and open call.
→ PROGRAMME ARCHIVE
Artists
Kelvin AtmadibrataAdriana Disman
Chinasa Vivian Ezugha
Jasper Llewellyn
E.M. Parry
Niya B
Shaun Caton
Jade Blackstock
Kimvi
Curators
Benjamin SebastianJoseph Morgan Schofield
The programme was funded by public funds from Arts Council England, and by VSSL studio and ]performance s p a c e[.
With thanks to Ash McNaughton.
Kelvin Atmadibrata, PSX exhibition launch, VSSL studio, 2021. Photo by Zack Mennell.
Studio Residencies
→ Gathering in a Time of PlagueOur studio community was joined by artists Kelvin Atmadibrata and Adriana Disman, who undertook seven month studio residencies at VSSL, supported by Arts Council England and ]performance s p a c e[.
As an expansion of my post-graduate investigation of the performing masculine body, I was introduced to the language of queer abstraction and minimalist erotica that I have since been experimenting and developing within my illustration of the mecha and transhumanist fantasy. The past months of lockdown and consequential shift towards the digital have also evoked queries upon my personal pace as I struggled to keep up with both the pandemic and the online, both that have more than ever, evolved with such robust momentums. I plan to utilize the studio space, peer and mentoring support with VSSL to reflect on these observations and refocus my productive engine with the ultimate aim of progressing my current artistic inquiries.
-Kelvin Atmadibrata
VSSL interviewed Kelvin about his practice, the relationship between fantasy, the erotic, drawing and performance, and the importance of studio culture.
-Kelvin Atmadibrata
VSSL interviewed Kelvin about his practice, the relationship between fantasy, the erotic, drawing and performance, and the importance of studio culture.
→ read Kelvin’s interview
Kelvin Atmadibrata, PSX exhibition launch, VSSL studio, 2021. Photo by Zack Mennell.
Adriana Disman, PSX exhibition launch, VSSL studio, 2021. Photo by Zack Mennell.
The love of my life is performance art. In the current context in which we are not able to witness the work of others, my own practice has shrivelled. It has no physical or mental space. It needs the nourishment and accountability to more creatures, to discover how it is now and what serves it. Through the support of this residency, I intent to cultivate a nourishing studio culture that mobilises potential exchange between artists to re-energise my commitment to my own practice. I am not looking for a simple physical space from which to transplant an already known practice, I’m looking for sparring partners who will challenge and push me with love and become part of the space that will form the practice. I dream that in this way, I might find some delicious edges from which to push off and kick out into a new ocean. Performance is vast.
-Adriana Disman
Kelvin and Adriana presented works made during the residency at the exhibition launch for PSX: a decade of performance art in the UK.
Kelvin Atmadibrata, PSX exhibition launch, VSSL studio, 2021. Film and editing by Baiba Sprance and Marco Beradi.
Kelvin Atmadibrata, PSX exhibition launch, VSSL studio, 2021. Film and editing by Baiba Sprance and Marco Beradi.
Adriana Disman, PSX exhibition launch, VSSL studio, 2021. Film and editing by Baiba Sprance and Marco Beradi.
Performance Programme
→ Gathering in a Time of PlagueThe Gathering in a Time of Plague programme featured seven live performance works by Chinasa Vivian Ezugha, Jasper Llewellyn, EM Parry, Niya B, Shaun Caton, Kimvi and Jade Blackstock. unfolding in and around VSSL in the spring and early summer.
Niya B, VSSL studio, 2021. Photo by Zack Mennell.Gathering in a Time of Plague compilation video. Videography and editing by Baiba Sprance and Marco Berad
Tongues, Chinasa Vivian Ezugha, VSSL studio, 2021. Photos by Zack Mennell.Tongues
Chinasa Vivian Ezugha
Saturday 17th April, 2021Imagine a new space, a space of possibilities- vocality and movement. The mouth is the new theatre. RE-imagining space and the placement of the body in space, this performance will use the tongue as the point of entry into a new performative space. ( I may need to speak with you to expand )
Tongues is a one-to-one performance by Chinasa Vivian Ezugha, with each encounter lasting around 5 minutes.
Chinasa Vivian Ezugha is a Nigerian-born artist living and working in Hampshire. Her work looks at the transition of Black women and their identity within culture from colonised subjects to emancipated figures. Vivian works predominantly in performance, using the medium to decontextualise and reconstruct what it means to be alive in this present time andtoprotest for a worldwhere we are all allowed to dream. She is the founder of Live Art in Wymondham, a one-day site-specific series of events that aimed to bring emerging artists working in live art to rural Norfolk.
Her work has been presented in venues across Europe, America and the UK, including In Between Time Festival (Bristol, 2017),SPILL Festival (Ipswich, 2018) and Rapid Pulse International Performance Art Festival (Chicago, 2015). She is the winner of the New Art Exchange Open Main Prize (2019), and a recipient of the Santander Universities Post Covid-19 Performance Making Enterprise Award (2020).
vcezugha.wixsite.com/work-in-progress
Jasper Llewellyn
Saturday 8th May 2021Working to the tidal rhythm of the Thames, Jasper Llewellyn’s work began on the shore of the river, before continuing at VSSL.
The work for VSSL contributes to a larger body of action-based interventions that Llewellyn has undertaken on the Thames foreshore in Deptford since mid-2020, most of which have been conducted without an audience. This ongoing series of actions are embodied attempts to attune to the diverse array of affective and nonhuman entities that comprise the assemblage that we term ‘the Thames’, reimagining our relationship to the river as a whole in the process.
Jasper Llewellyn is an artist working with actions, sounds and words. His ongoing PHD research project involves the deployment of various embodied artistic strategies in order to take an expanded view of improvisation, treating it both as a methodology for living and art-making. He makes music with the project ‘caroline’ and has had writing published in Frieze magazine.
www.jasperllewellyn.co.uk/
opening night
Thursday 3rd December, 2020
performances, actions and ritual activations through the glass on Resolution Way
We are delighted to announce the official opening of VSSL studio on Thursday 3rd December, with a series of performances, actions, and ritual activations by Benjamin Sebastian and Joseph Morgan Schofield, visible through the glass on Resolution Way.
VSSL is the artist studio of Sebastian and Schofield, a site of gathering and a container for performance and time-based art practices. Our first public performance programme, Gathering in a Time of Plague begins in early 2021.
![]()
![]()
![]()
![]()
![]()
![]()
VSSL is the artist studio of Sebastian and Schofield, a site of gathering and a container for performance and time-based art practices. Our first public performance programme, Gathering in a Time of Plague begins in early 2021.
Benjamin Sebastian. Photos by Zack McGuinness.