Folds Exhibition Info Pack 20 November - 1 December 2019 - Lewisham Arthouse, London

FOLDS Exhibition info pack

20.11.19 - 01.12.19 LEWISHAM ARTHOUSE 1

Folds Exhibition Dates: 20th November - 1st December 2019 Private view: 22nd November 6pm - 9pm Venue: Project Space - LEWISHAM ARTHOUSE 140 Lewisham way, SE14 6PD, London

Opening times: Wednesday - Saturday: 12pm - 6pm Sunday: 12pm - 5pm How to get there:

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The Exhibition

Folds are pleats of fabric, wrinkles in the skin or carefully folded strands of DNA in each of our cells. Folds are earthly or watery, creases in a landscape or ripples at the surface of the ocean. Folds bend straight lines, they provide texture to the smooth surface of appearance. Folds follow the curves of time, they testify to its passing and its opening to endless possibilities.

We are inside and outside, always experiencing, learning, folding, unfolding and refolding. Growing. Folds tend to make matter “flow out of its frame,� it can be a way of organising thinking and acting without binaries, absolutes or hierarchies.

Using the notion of folds as a point of departure, this project brings together 13 artists reflecting on the aesthetic, conceptual, ethical, and sociopolitical implications of folds. The full line up will showcase an array of work including illustration, painting, sculpture, photography, video and installation.

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Press release Folds is an exhibition curated by Chahine Fellahi and Megan GarryEvans featuring works of 13 international and UK based artists who have responded to the theme “folds.”

Using the notion of folds as a point of departure, this exhibition sets out to uncover the aesthetic, conceptual, ethical and sociopolitical implications of thinking through folds. Activating the interplay between surface and depth, inside and outside, exposure and concealment implicated in folds, this exhibition explores the multiple ways in which the concept can be mobilised as a tool to deconstruct binary oppositions.

The diversity of the works presented in the exhibition reflect the various forms folds can take. These include bodily folds as seen in the visceral paintings of Freya Nash and sensual photography of May Rohrer, paper folds as presented in Andrea Artz’s installation and Wiebke Leister’s photo-collages, as well as folds of cloth as explored in the drawings of Luisa-Maria Maccormack and Lisa Pettibone’s kiln-formed glass sculpture.

The different interpretations of the theme are deployed within the exhibition space, crystallising into an immersive topography.

Resonances, echoes and dialogues take place between the various perspectives provided by the artists, and folded within one another the works form a dynamic ‘texturology.’

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Venue

Lewisham Project Space Lewisham Arthouse curates and helps organize contemporary art exhibitions and associated events. The Project Space offers artists, curators and community groups the opportunity to realise experimental works, and contribute to an engaging and ambitious programme. www.lewishamarthouse.org.uk

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Curators Megan Garry-Evans Megan Garry-Evans is a publisher based in London. Interested in the crossover between publishing and curating, Megan founded in 2018 the curatorial and editorial platform Lemon Curd, for which she has worked with several artists and writers. Learning and collaborating is an important aspect of her work as well as exploring political and social issues. As such she is part of the collective Bad Housekeeping Project, has co-hosted creative writing workshops for a charity, C4WS and volunteers for the Feminist Library.

Chahine Fellahi Chahine Fellahi is a Moroccan visual artist and filmmaker based in London. Her practice incorporates film, photography, and mixed media techniques, combining analog and digital tools. Her work speculates on the ontology of sense, adressing the notion of corporeality and contemplating the geography of the body, its landscapes and frontiers.

Chahine has graduated from King’s College London with a MA in Film & Philosophy in 2018 and currently works at Parasol unit foundation for contemporary art. She has developed a curatorial practice over the past year, collaborating with Megan Garry-Evans on several projects, including Lemon Curd, Folds and Bad Housekeeping project. www.chahinefellahi.com 6

Artists

Nikki Alford

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Andrea G Artz

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Latifah Al Said

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Abbie Cairns

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Kirsty Dixon

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Lina Laraki

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Wiebke Leister

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Luisa-Maria Maccormack

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Freya Nash

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Lisa Pettibone

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May Rohrer

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Ellen Sampson

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Emily Scaife

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Nikki Alford As a maker and installation artist, Nikki Allford works with time consuming processes, often responding to a sense of place. She frequently works with everyday materials, manipulating and pushing boundaries with a twist that injects the familiar with unsettling expectations.

Nikki Allford’s work has been exhibited nationally and internationally with recent exhibitions (2018/19) in Mexico City, Moscow, Slovakia, London, Liverpool, Newcastle, Bath, Bristol, Totnes and Wells Cathedral.

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Blood Roses, electrical tape installation, 2018

Blood Roses emphasises the ways in which repetitive actions can result in the formation of a work, as the artist builds structures that are an accumulation of lines and tape. The resultant pieces can be read as abstract, or as hinting at other qualities--reminiscent of the innards of the body, pools of blood or water, skins, pelts, feathers or flowers.

Tape rolls are left in place. This simple gesture contextualises the forms so the materiality of the piece- the very products that it is made from- are clearly referenced. This act anchors the piece to both method and maker.

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Andrea Artz Andrea is a visual artist & photographer based in London. Her work has emerged out of photography’s’ expanded field and incorporates installation, sculpture, collage, photography and immersive media experiences. Originally trained as a photographer, Andrea is fascinated by the human form and face and believes in the magic of photographic portraits. She uses colour and space to invite the viewer to understand the photographic image in a contemporary setting such as immersive media technologies.

Originally from Germany, Andrea has studied at Hunter College New York and holds a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Leeds.

Recent awards include a Mac Dowell Fellowship and residency in Petersborough, NH/USA, and a European Centre for Creative Industries grant for her solo exhibition Farewells, and funding from the Arts Council of England to develop her virtual reality experience Ghost Weight. www.andreagartz.co.uk www.instagram.com/andreagartz

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Farewells, GicleĂŠ print on archival board, glue, inkjet print, print on lithographic film, 2018

Farewells is a large-scale site-specific installation that features photographic portrait sculptures that are cut out, bent and folded in the third dimension. The three-dimensional cardboard figures of various sizes transform a large exhibition space into a station where people in transit meet. The photographic imagery is based on photographs of commuters taken with an IPhone. The playful way of bending and folding the cut- out photographic prints into three dimensional sculptures exaggerate the physique and posture of the travellers.

The installation explores themes such as humanness, freedom, limitless possibilities, globalization, the expansion of consciousness, and at the same time displacement, being in exile, impermanence, endless movement and existential loneliness.

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Latifah Al Said As an artist of both British and Omani heritage, Latifah Al Said is deeply interested in how cultures attract or collide. Latifah’s mixed heritage has been a rich source of material to work with, though at times it has also created numerous questions about her identity and place in the world. Latifah’s work touches on themes of loss, memory, identity, and violence on the human body. Through her practice, she tries to connect with the viewer though the hand made and digital mark, to enter into a conversation on social and political world issues that affect us all as humans, regardless of race, religion or gender.

Latifah is currently studying Fine Art at Slade UCL having previously obtained an MA in Visual Communication at the Royal College of Art in 2017. For her work, Latifah has been awarded the Quentin Blake Narrative Drawing and Illustration Prize in 2017 and the Gordon Peter Pickard Travel Award in 2016. Since 2013 Latifah’s artwork has been shown extensively in exhibitions across London, such as DRAW show at Hockney Gallery (2017) and The ESOP group show at Mile End Art Pavilion (2019). www.latifah3rayoflight.com www.instagram.com/latifah_s_art

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Wedding Dream, mixed media painting, 120 x 90 cm, 2019

Wedding Dream is taken from a series of self portraits inspired by a few different key experiences in Latifah’s life that have shaped her.

As a survivor of domestic violence the wedding dream comes from a specific event with her ex partner, and reflects on how people hide behind the facade of a perfect life or relationship, when the reality is far from the truth.

The people in Latifah’s paintings most often inhabit domestic spaces and abstract landscapes that are lush and exotic. She explores the female body and the way it experiences and is shaped by others in this world. We use fabric and fold ourselves to fit into these perfect containers, and though they no longer fit us, society or culture requires and reminds us to behave in a specific way. The material hides our secrets, and covers our modesty with its enfolding veils.

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Abbie Cairns Abbie Cairns’ practice explores the use of text and site. She often uses found text within her work and draws upon their texts original meaning to guide her work, drawing on our shared public language.

Abbie largely works with installation and strives to find text from our everyday lives which can resonate with each site on its own terms.

By doing this she intends on engaging the audience and creating a dialectical relationship between the art and the audience and the art and the site. Abbie’s practice takes a DIY approach, as such she uses materials which are often inexpensive and processes that are easily accessible.

Abbie Cairns is an artist and art educator based in Colchester.

Cairns obtained her BA Fine Art from Norwich University of the Arts in 2016 and MA Fine Art from University of Suffolk in 2018. In 2017 she graduated with a PCGE from University Centre Colchester. www.instagram.com/abbiecairnsportfolio

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Paku Paku Instructions, interactive installation, 2019

The creation of the paku-pakus rely on a set of specific paper folds to create the end artefacts. Each fold is transformative and turns a flat piece of paper into a fictional play thing. In the creation, each fold hides a part of the paper. In the interaction each unfolding reveals another part of the story. The numerous numbers of options create a feeling of endless possibilities.

The original use of paku-paku’s was for ‘secret telling’. However, Abbie’s had a Dadaist makeover and can be used as a method to create a piece of nonsensical text – a Dadaist poem. Each fold contains a word – itself chosen from a block of text created with automatic techniques. As the choices are made there is an element of storytelling as the poem grows.

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Kirsty Dixon Kirsty Dixon’s work utilises the transformative effects of light and movement to effect our perception of locations, objects and emotions. Naturally occurring light effects are used as the basis of the works, either incorporating them directly into sitespecific pieces, or by capturing them as footage, to be reinterpreted and recreated as artworks.

Kirsty Dixon was born in Manchester, UK in 1981, she currently lives and works in London, UK. Kirsty Dixon’s work has been exhibited internationally, at galleries such as the Victoria and Albert Museum, An Lanntair, Elevator Gallery, Canal Gallery and Portico Gallery. While based in London, she also worked as Director of Hackney WickED CIC, running one of London’s biggest annual art festivals, and co-founded Parallel Relay, a site-specific sound and light collaboration with artist Esther Ainsworth. www.kirstydixon.com www.instagram.com/kirstydixonart

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Infinite Land and Sea I, mirror, acrylic, light, frame, 52 x 52 x 9 cm each, 2018

Infinite Land and Sea I is an infinity mirror diptych, created in response to the Muir is Tir residency, which took place both on land and at sea in the Outer Hebrides. The work reflects the contrasting and ever changing texture of the two converging landscapes; the rippling folds of both fashioned by the unusual geological makeup of the area, and sculpted and altered by its ever-changing weather and light. Translucent light is transformed into three-dimensional objects, which alter and diverge as you move around them, mimicking the naturally occurring patterns and effects seen in nature.

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Lina Laraki Lina Laraki (b. in Casablanca 1991) is a lover and filmmaker who lives and works nomadically in Morocco. Her practice explores affects and aesthetics related to the cinematographic apparatus.

She works with movement as language and gesture that attempts to create emotional resistances to bigger narratives, towards a tender form of art that reconciles us with the real.

Graduating from Central Saint Martins in 2012, Lina’s work has since been exhibited locally and internationally in numerous festivals and galleries including Le 18, Derb El Ferrane in Marrakech, Galerie Delacroix in Tangiers, Guest projects in London, the Festival of Contemporary Visual Arts in Madrid and Visite Film Festival in Antwerp. www.linalaraki.com www.instagram.com/youareinthistoo

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To Be Sea, neon tube on acrylic bar, 60 cm x 20 cm (6mm neon tube), 2018

To Be Sea is a piece born out of the unfolding of a geography and the collective memory tapped into through the singular memory of a body. When a body leaves a land it becomes its own geography and a place for the place. It becomes inhabited by the memory of absence and generates singular affects related to its mobility, forced or desired. As much as an individual experience it becomes a collective one due to mass displacements. History gets written by leaving the narrative of the affects on the margin. How can a body be free from History ? Can it find its own unity again ?

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Wiebke Leister Wiebke Leister is an artist and researcher living in London and Detmold. Her work challenges the limitations of photographic representation and individual likeness, often focusing on the human face as a canvas, a medium or an agent. Since 2015, she has been exploring the non-representational potential of Japanese Noh theatre, trying to visually translate the sense of a mask as a living object through live performance, improvisation and remediation using elements of decollage such as layering, folding, cutting and overwriting.

Wiebke studied at the University in Essen and gained a PhD from the Royal College of Art in London. Her work has been exhibited at numerous venues locally and internationally including Museum fßr Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg, Australian Centre of Photography Sydney, Goethe Institut London, Institute of Contemporary Arts London and The Photographers’ Gallery London. She is also a coorganiser of the Photography and the Contemporary Imaginary Research Hub and a core member of the Photography and the Archive Research Centre at University of the Arts London. www.instagram.com/wiebkeleister

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Echoes and Callings (women), hand folded collage on Japanese paper with acetate foil, 40x50 cm, 2018-19

Photographs from collaboration with Japanese Noh mask maker Hideta Kitazawa at his Tokyo studio in April 2018, documenting the process of carving a Namanari mask. The images were first used during the live performance Echoes and Callings at Kings Place in London on 30 June 2018.

The performance maps the transformation process of an angry woman into a fierce demoness by manipulating photographs of masks and facial expressions through folding, layering and cutting to conjure up her expressive range through still images. The collages combine views onto different sides of the mask at different stages during the making process. Combining the gestures of making the mask with those of collaging the images, the work maintains a somewhat provisional and searching agency.

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Luisa-Maria Maccormack Luisa Maria-Maccormack’s work has a tendency towards the duplicitous, and is often cross-disciplinary in nature. She explores issues of spirituality, global supernatural and mythic traditions, sexuality, gender, the physicality of the body, belief and the evolution of ritual. Above all, Luisa’s interest lies in forcing the viewer to question their own perception of the world around them, as she often attempts to re-author, re-address and interrogate the preexisting narratives of that world, especially ones constructed by patriarchal, misogynistic and regressive systems of thought.

Luisa studied at the Royal Drawing School and currently works as a practising artist and freelance art and art history tutor in London. She co-founded The Big Art Herstory Project and The London Drawing Group, a teaching and arts collective run by three practicing female artists, with a focus on providing innovative and affordable art classes in London. www.luisamariam.com www.instagram.com/luisamariamfineart

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Delilah, charcoal on paper, A5, 2019.

Delilah is a Drapery study taken from Rubens’ Samson and Delilah at the National Gallery. The painting depicts a theme common to the history of art, that of the betrayal of Samson and the prostitution of Delilah. The painting, although depicting the biblical Delilah as an apparently powerful temptress, also depicts her as passive, unmoving and on display as the scene unfolds around her. She is exposed; breasts bulging from the tightly bound sheath of muslin she wears as a dress. ‘Delilah’ was the start of Luisa’s Drapery series and was originally a reaction to her emotional discomfort in observing the painting. By isolating the drapery that bound her Luisa sought to free the image of Delilah, her body and her reputation from the bonds that shackled her.

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Freya Nash Freya’s practice stems from a concern in the state of the human – what it means to live, evolve and experience the world around us.

As we constantly fluctuate between material and digital, organic and inorganic, in response, her work is created by continually working between these boundaries. She uses painting to represent the organic and employ the use of digital technologies to transform and expand the work – much like digital technology has altered the way we experience the world and interact with one another.

Freya is a Central Saint Martins graduate and her work has been shown in multiple festivals and galleries including FemFest, Into the Wild Festival and Game Face exhibition at the Ugly Duckling. www.freyanash.co.uk www.instagram.com/freya_nash

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Bodily Portrait, oil on canvas board, 20.5 x 23.5 cm, 2019

Freya’s Bodily Portrait series invite you to climb inside and explore the abstract forms of the interior, subverting the borders between inside and out, creating a tension that is synonymous with the body. Standing as a hybrid between figuration and abstraction her paintings attempt to convey the juxtaposition between the visceral reality and violence of the internal body whilst revealing the beauty and sensuality of it.

Within us is a world of intricacy, a universe of visceral landscapes kept safe behind a protective layer of skin. Through these pieces Freya attempts to capture exquisite abjection by depicting what should remain inside, what is both known and unknown, synchronously attracts and repels and is the axis between life and death.

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Lisa Pettibone Originally from San Francisco Bay Area, CA, Lisa was trained as a graphic designer and found her way into sculpture via glass making.

With an interest in astronomy and physics, her practice investigates hidden forces such as gravity, energy and tension, spontaneously recorded in materials, evoking direct sensory experiences connecting man to his environment. Using installation, sculpture and imagery her work also queries the construct of human perception while exploring illusion as a path to understanding.

Lisa obtained a BA in in 3D Design in Glass from UCA Farnham in 2005 and in 2018 she graduated from UAL Central Saint Martins with an MA in Art and Science. Exhibiting in the UK and internationally, Pettibone was long listed for the Aesthetica Art Prize in 2013, selected for the Discerning Eye exhibition (2015/2018) and was the installation category winner for the National Open Art Prize in 2017. www.pettibone.co.uk www.instagram.com/lisa_pettibone

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Swathe, platinum lustred glass, 28 x 13 x 10 cm, 2019

Swathe is a white kiln-formed glass sculpture inspired from carved marble statues that Lisa has seen in museums around the world.

It is the beautiful folds of the garments that cling to the figures which have been carved out of an unforgiving material that is most significant to her. Glass can flow like fabric in its liquid state, and with the help of gravity, it is possible to achieve a sensuous fall like that which appears in the folds of fabric. Lisa’s interest in physical sciences and astronomy direct her to pay attention to naturally occurring movement caused by forces such as gravity. Giving into these movements and exploring how they affect the materiality of glass occupies much of her sculpture practice.

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May Rohrer May Rohrer is a French photographer who currently lives and works in Paris. She practices engraving, performance, poetry and video. Exploring the notion of fusion within relationships, her work is an attempt to bring visual answers to questions related to body, femininity and the contradictory desires inside us. Working mainly in studio, she creates her universe playing with lights and the infinite possibilities of her beloved muses’ bodies, also putting her own at stake.

Graduated from the Master of Photography and Contemporary Art of Paris 8 University, she also created “Association Metamorphosis” which supports and gathers young artists developing experimental work around the body through photography and visual arts. Her work has been exhibited mostly in Paris, in art festivals such as Festival 100% at La Villette where she presented a photograph from her Désirs Obscurs series and her performance called “L’Illusion d’une Fusion” mixing poems, sound, visual and body language, with the artist and dancer Paula Alves. www.mayrohrer.com www.instagram.com/mayrohrer

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Becoming One, digital photography, 120 x 50 cm, 2019

The photograph Becoming One comes from May’s reflection around the uniqueness of beings. It is a self-portrait with her muse Elena Ramos, a contortionist artist with whom May has collaborated since her beginnings in photography. This iconic picture puts an end to a three-folded cycle around the (im)possible fusion of two bodies and their search for contact through the image.

Revealing the singularity of femininity, “Becoming One” questions bodies and their limits through both visual and physical entanglement, enhancing flesh, textures, colors and sensuality. Here, the apparent fusion becomes transformation, and this time is a good omen: to be one, not to possess the other and incorporate her, but to share, enrich, and grow this hybrid created out of two. “Becoming One” leads to a new vision : Love’s Rebirth.

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Ellen Sampson Ellen Sampson is an artist and material culture researcher who’s work explores the relationships between bodies, memory and clothing, both in museums and archives, and in everyday life. Using film, photography, performance and writing she interrogates the ways that garments become records of lived experience using looking closely and making close up images as a way of engaging with the intricacies of wear, gesture, and trace. In Exploring the resonance of worn and used artefacts, she seeks to uncover how attachment to the material world is produced and maintained.

Ellen Sampson obtained a PhD at the Royal College of Art in 2016.

She was 2018/19 Polaire Weismann Fellow at The Costume Institute - The Metropolitan Museum of Art working on a projected titled The Afterlives of Clothes. www.ellensampson.com www.instagram.com/ellensampson

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Fold, HD video, colour, silent, 3’50 min., 2013

Fold explores the traces our bodies leave in the world. Over time garments become records of lived experience, covered with the marks of use. Wear is materialized in clothing in many ways.. As a garment is worn, its surface becomes a network of lines, maps of our movements: cartographies of experience.

Often the first signs of use are a crumpled surface; the wrinkling and folding of fabric to accommodate gesture. Creases and folds are an inversion, a contortion of the material’s form. Creases are the transformation of a surface through action. Most commonly creases occur at the joints of our bodies flex, bringing together nonadjacent sections of fabric to create pockets, ridges, and furrows.

Creases are lines drawn through movement, gestures retained in a physical form.

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Emily Scaife Emily’s moving image practice begins with explorations in texture, colour, shape and pattern: collecting specimens then manipulating them with analogue photographic and mark-making techniques.

She also works with sound using similar processes to create live visuals, projections, installations, music videos and films.

Emily’s first animation project, created during her MA in Animation at the Royal College of Art in 2015, has since been to over 30 international festivals, turned into 4 bespoke installations and was Finalist for Best Student Film at the biennial British Animation Awards 2018. She is currently developing a live AV show about mollusc intercourse, commissioned by Flatpack Film Festival and funded by Jerwood Arts. www.emilyscaife.com www.instagram.com/emily.scaife

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Cauliwobbles, HD video, colour, sound, 1 min. loops, 2015

Cauliwobbles is a series of video loops created through a process of extracting rhythms from vegetables by scanning them in slowly, then turning them into film strips. Each vegetable was then saved onto a separate MiniDisc and packaged up into a selection box which includes images of leek, courgette, carrots and beetroot.

The magnification resulting from the scanning process reveals the intricate textures, patterns and colours which mark the skin of each vegetable.

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Partners

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