SHAPESHIFTING - tactics to combat drowning 9 June - 18 June
“The space between ourselves and our others is at once as distant as the primeval sea, yet also closer than our own skin – the traces of those some oceanic beginnings still cycling through us, pausing as this bodily thing we call “mine”. Water is between bodies, but of bodies, before us and beyond us, yet also very presently this body, too.“
Hydrofeminism: Or, On Becoming a Body of Water.
Astrida Neimanis
The Hewing Wittare Project Space is proud to present a 3 woman show with Chudamani Clowes, Rebecca Glover and Anna Liber Lewis. Through an immersive and sensual installation set on the sea bed the exhibition addresses encounters of bodies with environment, in a search for shelter, protection and survival. The artists use the watery world as a metaphor for our current political climate in which the fight for survival, shelter and equality is growing tougher by the day. Working across the disciplines of painting, sculpture, performance and sound these are three artists of extraordinary vision, each giving voice to an alternative way of living from Trump’s America.
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Royal College of Art graduate and multi-disciplinary artist Chud Clowes tackles themes of migration and homelessness, leading to the desperate lack of shelter for so many. Often responding to the way the historical past deals with issues of immigration and race, in 'Shapeshifting - tactics to combat drowning' Clowes highlights the need for refuge, protection and the plight of millions caused by globalisation and war.
Working with performance, ceramics, printmaking and paint, Clowes has responded to this exhibition using the Urchin, a sea life creature, as her trigger point. The existence of an Urchin is migratory, it has to travel to eat and stay alive which has given Clowes a cause to study the creature where she then discovered the word Urchin was also used in Victorian time to mean rascal, minx, mischief-maker, prankster and rogue. Understanding that many migrants are labelled incorrectly, Clowes tells us who the true tricksters are. chudclowes.viewbook.com
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This is not a protest
It is an urge to listen
a celebration
of cross-species collaboration,
of disparate voices,
of mingling,
of fluid identities,
Florence Trust resident artist Rebecca Glover considers the site, objects and instruments as collaborators in her work. Fluid Bodies is a site specific sound installation created especially for the bathroom at the project space. Constructed from field recordings made on site and at the Walthamstow reservoirs this piece navigates an imaginative journey exploring the shapeshifting identities of watery bodies. The ethereal and at times unsettling soundscape is grounded in a selection of objects, a contact mic emerges from lump of pink alabaster formed from a dried up desert lake and winds its way onto a slab of fossilised sea floor. These solidified watery bodies sing to us from their sedentary state. If rocks had a sonic memory Fluid Bodies might be their anthem.
Rebecca Glover is also exhibiting a number of her sculptures. These multi-orificed vessels are all members of her band SLABS. Singing through feedback loops, mimicry, harmony and distortion their music defies genres and articulates a new way of listening to objects and she evokes a sense of fluid connection with, and care for, our surroundings. rebeccaglover.co.uk
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Royal College of Art graduate Anna Liber Lewis paints from life, from imagination and from memory. Each painting comes from an encounter.
Shifting between what is seen and what is felt. Liber Lewis is interested in the encounter: the moment when two things meet and something shifts, a metamorphosis happens; sometimes physical, sometimes emotional. The paintings morph between the act of looking and the manifestation of a sensation; be that flirtatious glances, desire or defiance. Drawing on ancient mythology the paintings dive a little further beyond the surface and play with some classical motifs; focusing on the power of female sexuality. Many spaces are at play and each of these spaces is left to vibrate in the truth and untruth of things. annaliberlewis.com
